Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“...there were two gentleman seated by it talking in French;impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or comprehend much of the purport of what they said ...yet French, in the mouths of Frenchmen or Belgians (...), was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen presently discerned me to be an Englishman - no doubt from the fashion in which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English. The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice ,politely accosted me in very good English; I remember I wish to God that I could speak French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the capital I was in, it was my first experience of that skill in living languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“Yes,’ he replied, ‘absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.’

‘She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,’ observed Adele.

‘I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele.’

‘She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?’

‘Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.’

‘Oh, qu’ elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?’

Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. ‘Hem!’ said he. ‘What would you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Se supone que las mujeres aspiran a la calma, pero lo cierto es que mujeres y hombres comparten los mismos sentimientos. Ellas, al igual que sus hermanos, también necesitan ejercitar sus facultades y un campo donde poder concentrar sus esfuerzos. Las rígidas represiones y el estancamiento absoluto les causan el mismo sufrimiento que provocaría en los hombres, y resulta patético que esos compañeros más privilegiados las confinen en el hogar, a hornear pasteles o zurcir medias, a tocar el piano o bordar bolsas. Es injusto criticarlas o reírse de sus empeños por llegar más allá, por aprender cosas que la costumbre les ha negado, tachándolas de innecesarias para las de su sexo.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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 as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Je peux lui confier la part immortelle de mon être sans la moindre appréhension.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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 situated 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 snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“It was not her heart so much as her temper that was wrong.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How is Papa's Polly?''
''How is Polly's Papa?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Algunas de las mejores personas que han existido en el mundo han estado tan desposeídas como yo estoy ahora. Si usted es cristiana, no debería considerar la pobreza como un crimen.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I wonder why moralists call this a dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like a rose.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a nasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jan Eyre

“Los sentimientos sin sentido común son algo anodino; pero el sentido común sin nada de sentimiento es un bocado demasiado amargo y basto para el consumo humando.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Reader, I married him”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was a human being, and had a human being's wants.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Unloved I love, unwept I weep,
Grief I restrain, hope I repress;
Vain is this anguish, fixed and deep,
Vainer desires or dreams of bliss.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Selected Brontë Poems

“It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to—the devil?”
“I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.”
“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.
“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?”
“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.”
“You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”
“And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. “I could not spare the money on any account.”
“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.”
“Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.”
“Just let me look at the cash.”
“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Tu sei parte di me, la parte migliore di me, il mio buon angelo: a te mi sento legato da un forte affetto. Ti giudico buona, intelligente, amabile: nel mio cuore è nata una passione fervida, solenne, che si rivolge a te, ti attira al centro, alla sorgente della mia vita, fa di te il fulcro della mia esistenza; e, ardendo in una fiamma pura e forte, fa di noi due un essere solo.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“uno se sentía como si le hablara la imagen esculpida de algún espíritu maligno.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“I fear a high wind, because storm demands that exertion of strength and use of action I always yield with pain; but the sullen down-fall, the thick snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, ask only resignation—the quiet abandonment of garments and person to be, drenched. In return, it sweeps a great capital clean before you; it makes you a quiet path through broad, grand streets; it petrifies a living city as if by eastern enchantment; it transforms a Villette into a Tadmor.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones— that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Sentir e compreender os sentimentos dos outros são qualidades distintas. Poucas pessoas possuem as duas; algumas, nenhuma.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shinning far down upon us out of mer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villete

“não há maior felicidade que sentirmo-nos estimados dos nossos semelhantes e compreendermos que a nossa presença contribui para a sua satisfação.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they 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 besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. 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, too 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