Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination—her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still”
― Charlotte Brontë

“walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no more.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: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“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.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken gray eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm "the untidy badge;" scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow, because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those miniature defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And I would have contented, or, at least, I would clearly have enlightened him, and taught him well never again to expect of me the part of officious soubrette in a love drama; when, following his, soft, eager, murmur, meeting almost his pleading, mellow—“Do content me, Lucy!” a sharp hiss pierced my ear on the other side. “Petite chatte, doucerette, coquette!” sibillated the sudden boa-constrictor; “vous avez l’air bien triste, soumis, rêveur, mais vous ne l’êtes pas: c’est moi qui vous le dis: Sauvage! la flamme à l’âme, l’éclair aux yeux!” “Oui; j’ai la flamme à l’âme, et je dois l’avoir!” retorted I, turning in just wrath: but Professor Emanuel had hissed his insult and was gone.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“if people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“—Es suficiente, señor; una sola palabra bien dicha puede contener tanta buena voluntad como muchas.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“At this arrangement, highly absurd as it was, not a soul in the room dared to laugh; luckless for the giggler would have been the giggle. As for me, I took it with entire coolness. There I sat, isolated and cut off from human intercourse; I sat and minded my work, and was quiet, and not at all unhappy.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Ay, I am proud, and so are ye; but your pride and mine is t’ raight mak — what we call i’ Yorkshire clean pride — such as Mr. Malone and Mr. Donne knows nought about. Theirs is mucky pride.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës Complete Works

“Μπορεί στο μυαλό μου να πλάθω παράδεισους και δρόμους στρωμένους με ρόδα αλλά ο δρόμος που έχω να διανύσω στη ζωή μου είναι γεμάτος αγκάθια και θα πρέπει να πατάω πολύ γερά στη γη , αν θέλω να φτάσω στο τέρμα του”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me now.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Pero le digo (y puede creer a ciegas en mis palabras) que algún día una corriente traidora agitará las aguas del canal, y el suave arroyo de su vida se transformará en un remolino turbulento y ensordecedor; en ese momento, las rocas traicioneras la despedazarán o, tal vez una ola liberadora la elevará por encima de los escollos y la arrastrará hasta aguas más serenas, las aguas por las que yo navego ahora.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But I've been as happy musing by myself among these stones, under that old church: lying, through the long June evenings, on the green mound of her mother's grave, and wishing, yearning for the time when I might be beneath it. - pg 311”
― Charlotte Brontë

“La coherencia, señora, es el principal de los deberes cristianos.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want of it.  Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“La historia está contada. Imagino al juicioso lector poniéndose los anteojos para buscar la moraleja. Sería un insulto a su sagacidad darle pistas. Tan solo diré: ¡que Dios le ampare en su búsqueda!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“You left him a sup o' wine, I hope, Bob" (turning to Mr. Moore), "to keep his courage up?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley: By Charlotte Brontë - Illustrated

“Ternyata tahu dua puluh jalan lain pun juga tak ada gunanya, karena dia telah melihatku.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Los niños tienen sentimientos pero no saben analizarlos, o si los analizan parcialmente, no saben expresar con palabras los resultados de tales análisis.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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 constraint, 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

“I took my turn with the rest, and could hardly believe what the glass said when I applied to it for information afterwards; the lavished garlandry of woven brown hair amazed me—I feared it was not all my own, and it required several convincing pulls to give assurance to the contrary.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Minä pelkään suurta tuulta, koska myrsky vaatii voimanponnistusta ja toimintaa, johon minä aina vaivoin antaudun, mutta yrmeä sade, sakea lumipyry tai pimeä sadekuuro vaativat vain alistumista – itsenä ja vaatteittensa hiljaista jättämistä kastumisen varaan. Palkaksi se lakaisee suurenpääkaupungin puhtaksi edessäsi, se antaa sinulle hiljaisen matkan pitkin leveitä suuria katuja, se verhoaa suuren kaupungin kuin itämaiseen lumoukseen, se tekee Villettestä Tadmorin.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“you strange, you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary; to her instruction I owed the best art of my acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and latterly, companion.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But not love! Love is real — the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës Complete Works