Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to “burst” with boldness and good-will into “the silent sea” of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Conqueror I might be of the house but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possesor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit -- with will and energy, and virtue and purity -- that I want: not alone your brittle frame”
― 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. I”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Finiscila, Jane! Dai troppo peso all'amore degli esseri umani. Sei troppo impulsiva, troppo irruenta. La mano divina che ha creato il tuo corpo, e poi vi ha soffiato dentro la vita, ti ha dotato di risorse che vanno ben oltre la tua fragilità dei tuoi simili. Al di là di questa terra e al di là del genere umano, c'è un mondo invisibile e un regno di anime. Quel mondo è tutto intorno a noi, perché è ovunque, e quelle anime vegliano su di noi, perché hanno il compito di proteggerci. E se stiamo morendo nel dolore e nella vergogna, se il disprezzo ci colpisce da ogni parte e l'odio ci schiaccia, gli angeli vedono i nostri tormenti, riconoscono la nostra innocenza e Dio, per incoronarci della meritata ricompensa, aspetta solo che il nostro spirito si separi dalla carne. E allora perché dobbiamo lasciarci sempre sopraffare dall'angoscia, quando la vita finisce in un attimo e la morte non è altro che un passaggio per la felicità, per la gloria?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And after all, authors' heroines are almost as good as authoress's heroes.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“Lucy, has he not rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent—a beef-eater tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“About midnight, the storm in one half-hour fell to a dead calm. The
fire, which had been burning dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air
change, and become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked out, and
saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a sharp frost.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten center.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You, Jane, I must have you for my own – entirely my own.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable. I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth; I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and daring the dread glance.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Jag kände igen den kraftfulla näsan, som talade mer om karaktär än om skönhet,”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The graves I close, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept are seen by me ascending from the clods, haloed most of them; but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their outline , the sound which wakened the dues, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, repealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, “As well soon as syne.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“In this state of feeling, it is not to be expected that he would deliberate much as to whether his advance was or was not prejudicial to others. Not being a native, nor for any length of time a resident of the neighbourhood, he did not sufficiently care when the new inventions threw the old workpeople out of employ. He never asked himself where those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread; and in this negligence he only resembled thousands besides, on whom the starving poor of Yorkshire seemed to have a closer claim.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës Complete Works

“As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough; if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live – I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and lit it dash its hoof at my chest.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“they [women] 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

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë

“We will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the mid-day in slumber, and dream of dawn.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Ningún ser que haya nacido libre debería someterse ni siquiera por dinero.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But another decree was written. It seemed I must be stimulated into action, i must be goaded, driven, stung, forced to energy. My little morsel of human affection, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must melt in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving hailstone. My small adopted duty must be snatched from my easily contented conscience. I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains. Fate would not be so pacified; nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth and cowardly indolence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette