Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms; my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect; it seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner--to join in the same enterprise.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“An idea once seized, I fell to work. "Human Justice" rushed before me in novel guise, a red, random beldame, with a rms akimbo. I saw her in her house, the den of confusion: servants called to her for orders or help which she did not give; beggars stood at her door waiting and starving unnoticed; a swarm of children, sick and quarrelsome, crawled round her feet, and yelled in her ears appeals for notice, sympathy, cure, redress. The honest woman cared for none of these things. She had a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her own solace in a short black pipe, and a bottle of Mrs. Sweeny's soothing syrup; she smoked and she sipped, and she enjoyed her paradise; and whenever a cry of the suffering souls about her 'pierced her ears too keenly--my jolly dame seized the poker or the hearth-brush: if the offender was weak, wronged, and sickly, she effectually settled him: if he was strong, lively, and violent, she only menaced, then plunged her hand in her deep pouch, and flung a liberal shower of sugar-plums.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“By the clock of St Jean Baptiste, that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, but sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night a cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well, but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering, brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips, tastes not as this suffering tasted.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Resurgam”
― Charlotte Bronte , Jane Eyre

“Since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with few pretensions.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; the must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions, beside political rebellions, ferment in the masses of life which people earth.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.  I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now.  Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.  If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?  They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“My bride is here,' he said, again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“We know that God is everywhere…it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believe that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say FORMER, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“All my life was awake and astir in my frame...and he I was not to array myself to meet.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“I thought of him now-in his room-watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return; it was not too late.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You both think I know not what,' said I. 'Have the goodness to make me as little the subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as possible. I have my own sort of life apart from yours.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“After the play, after the play', said M. Paul. 'I will then divide my pair of pistols between you, and we will settle the dispute according to form.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong – that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Decidedly he has had too much wine,' I thought”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.'
'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed.
[...]
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak.
'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.'
'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly.
'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.'
'In what shape?'
'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.'
'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!'
'But you will have.'
'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth.
'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.'
'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.'
'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!'
'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!'
'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!'
'Where, Jane? to Ireland?'
'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.'
'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.'
'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.'
Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.
'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.'
'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.'
'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.'
[...]
'Do you doubt me, Jane?'
'Entirely.'
'You have no faith in me?'
'Not a whit.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir."

"Station! station!--your station is in my heart.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Remorse is the poison of life. Reformation may be its cure.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation; instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does it weakness? Of late, Jane--only--only of late--I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Are you going somewhere, Helen?  Are you going home?” “Yes; to my long home—my last home.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Where, indeed, does the moon not look well?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“you think all existence lapses in a quiet flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“quit that chatter you block head and do my bidding.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“A phase of my life was closing to-night, a
new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being
accomplished.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre