Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place. I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; 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: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness—to glory?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Att vara tillsammans med varandra är för oss att samtidigt vara lika fria som i ensamheten och lika glada som i sällskapet (s. 523).”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Great were that folly which should build on such a promise—insane that credulity which should mistake the transitory rain-pool, holding in its hollow one draught, for the perennial spring yielding the supply of seasons.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him. If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and have died to them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—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 as 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 spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I, that evening, shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The murdered do haunt their murderer. (...) Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! - pg 211”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I have taken notice, Monsieur, that people who are only in each other's company for amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each other so highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer together.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“Commencez!' cried I, when they had all produced their books. The moon-faced youth (by name of Jules Vanderkelkov, as I afterwards learned) took the first sentence. The 'livre de lecteur' was 'The Vicar of Wakefield', much used in foreign schools, because it is supposed to contain prime samples of conversational English. It might, however, have been a Runic scroll for any resemblance the worse, as enunciated by Jules, bore to the language in ordinary use amongst the natives of Great Britain. My God! how he did snuffle, snort, and wheeze! All he said was said in his throat and nose, for it is thus the Flamands speak; but I heard him to the end of his paragraph without proffering a word of correction, whereat he looked vastly self-complacent, convinced, no doubt, that he had acquitted himself like a real born and bred 'Anglais'. In the same unmoved silence I listened to a dozen in rotation; and when the twelfth had concluded with splutter, hiss, and mumble, I solemnly laid down the book.
'Arrêtez!', said I. There was a pause, during which I regarded them all with a steady and somewhat stern gaze. A dog, if stared at hard enough and long enough, will show symptoms of embarrassment, and so at length did my bench of Belgians. Perceiving that some of the faces before me were beginning to look sullen, and others ashamed, I slowly joined my hands, and ejaculated in a deep 'voix de poitrine' -
'Comme c'est affreux!'
They looked at each other, pouted, coloured, swung their heels, they were not pleased, I saw, but they were impressed, and in the way I wished them to be. Having thus taken them down a peg in their self-conceit, the next step was to raise myself in their estimation - not a very easy thing, considering that I hardly dared to speak for fear of betraying my own deficiencies.
'Ecoutez, messieurs!' I said, and I endeavoured to throw into my accents the compassionate tone of a superior being, who, touched by the extremity of the helplessness which at first only excited his scorn, deigns at length to bestow aid. I then began at the very beginning of 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and read, in a slow, distinct voice, some twenty pages, they all the while sitting mute and listening with fixed attention. By the time I had done nearly an hour had elapsed. I then rose and said, -
'C'est assez pour aujourd'hui, messieurs; demain nous recommençerons, et j'espère que tout ira bien.'
With this oracular sentence I bowed, and in company with M. Pelet quitted the schoolroom.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“The daylight came.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The graves unclose, 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 dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, resealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Ere long, I had reasons to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit: thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm; which, had they found me unprepared, I should have been unequal to maintain, even externally.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I knew…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…strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“As he was not merciful, he would sometimes wound and wound again, without noticing how much he hurt, or caring how deep he thrust.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“To my mind a man is nothing without the spice of the devil in him.

Blanche Ingram”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised (mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud), “I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any one may serve:”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the Church strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“A more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered - you must have music, dancing, and society - or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes - include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it - go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling - and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I longed to go where there was life and movement.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Hicisteis bien en agarraros la una a la otra -dije, como si las monstruosas astillas fueran seres vivos que me pudieran oír-. Creo que, por heridas, carbonizadas y chamuscadas que parezcáis, todavía debéis de tener una sensación de vida, producida por vuestra unión en las raíces fieles y constantes. Nunca más tendréis hojas verdes, nunca más veréis a los pájaros anidar y cantar romances entre vuestras ramas. Se ha acabado para vosotras el tiempo de placer y amor, pero no estáis desoladas, pues cada una tiene una compañera que comparta su decadencia con ella.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is right to look our life-accounts bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly. And he is a poor self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons the items, and sets down under the head — happiness that which is misery.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Georgiano, próżniejsze i głupsze od ciebie stworzenie z pewnością nigdy nie chodziło po świecie. Nie powinnaś się była urodzić, gdyż nie umiesz spożytkować życia. Zamiast żyć dla samej siebie, w sobie i z sobą, jak każdy rozumny człowiek powinien, ty tylko szukasz, do czyjej siły mogłabyś przyczepić swoją słabość. A jeżeli nie znajdujesz nikogo, kto by był gotów wziąć na siebie ciężar takiej tłustej, słabej, pustej, niezdarnej istoty, krzyczysz, że cię maltretują, zaniedbują, żeś nieszczęśliwa. Przy tym życie musi być dla ciebie szeregiem ciągłych zmian i podniecających wrażeń, inaczej świat, wedle ciebie, to więzienie; chcesz, by cię podziwiano, by cię uwielbiano, by ci pochlebiano; potrzeba ci muzyki, tańca, towarzystwa, bez tego nudzisz się, tęsknisz, zamierasz. Czyż nie masz dość rozumu, żeby obmyślić sobie sposób życia, który by cię uniezależnił od czyjejś pomocy, od czyjejś woli poza twoją własną? Weź jeden dzień, podziel go na części, każdej jego części wyznacz zadanie, nie pozostawiaj wolnych i nie zajętych kwadransów, dziesięciu, pięciu minut, wypełnij sobie cały czas; każdą robotę z kolei wykonaj systematycznie, ściśle i dokładnie. Dzień ci upłynie, zanim się spostrzeżesz, że się zaczął, z nikomu nie będziesz zawdzięczała, że ci dopomógł przebyć choćby jedną zbędną chwilę. Nie będziesz potrzebowała szukać niczyjego towarzystwa, rozmowy, sympatii, względności; słowem, będziesz żyła tak, jak powinna żyć istota niezależna. Przyjmij tę radę, pierwszą i ostatnią, jaką ci daję, a wtedy nie będziesz potrzebowała ani mnie, ani nikogo innego, cokolwiek by się stało. Nie chcesz? Żyj dalej jak dotąd, wiecznie czegoś pragnąć, utyskując i próżnując, a będziesz musiała znieść następstwa swej głupoty, choćby były najprzykrzejsze i trudne do zniesienia."

- Eliza Reed, "Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë

“We have none of us long to live: let us help each other through seasons of want and woe, as well as we can, without heeding in the least the scruples of vain philosophy.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley