Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Gratitude is a divine emotion. It fills the heart, not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever. I like to taste leisurely of bliss. Devoured in haste, I do not know its flavor.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution -- such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight -- to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood -- no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet -- That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Little things recall us to earth. The clock struck in the hall; that sufficed. I turned from the moon and the stars, opened a side door, and went in.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How dare I, Mrs Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“This night is not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. The Moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch for his goddess tonight. there are no flocks out on the mountains; and it is well, for to-night she welcomes Aeolus.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“But you know very well you are thinking of another they, and that he is not thinking of you”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked."

"We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth and grace - for never to any else shall I seem to possess these charms.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it - as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips - it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“With what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“People talk of natural sympathies ; I have heard of good genii ; there are grains of truth in the wildest fable.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There are people whom a lowered position degrades morally, to whom loss of connection costs loss of self-respect: are not these justified in placing the highest value on that station and association which is their safeguard from debasement? If a man feels that he would become contemptible in his own eyes were it generally known that his ancestry were simple and not gentle, poor and not rich, workers and not capitalists, would it be right severely to blame him for keeping these fatal facts out of sight--for starting, trembling, quailing at the chance which threatens exposure? The longer we live, the more our experience widens; the less prone are we to judge our neighbor's conduct, to question the world's wisdom: wherever an accumulation of small defences is found, whether surrounding the prude's virtue or the man of the world's respectability, there, be sure, it is needed.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Some have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

“I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,' said Diana, 'during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you - he will make it up.'

I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him - he stood at the foot of the stairs.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated." "Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing." The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.
'Oh, you are indeed there, my sky-lark!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be. . .)”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“So this subject is done with. It is right to look our life-accounts bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“An extraordinary dream by lord charles wellesley. (Charlotte Bronte)

'In this slumber i thought i was walking on the banks of a river... Which murmered over small pebbles at the bottom, gleaming like crystals through the silver stream' 'and the green buds of the wild rose trees around were unopened' 'and a mild warmth were shed from the sun... Then at its height in the blue sky”
― Charlotte Brontë

“[...] I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth,but i experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed, and the flame of resentment extinguished”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling like, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“…that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possess; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I valued…; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed I wished to behold.

Who blamed me? Many no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restless was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre