Top 377 Quotes & Sayings by Charlotte Bronte - Page 4

Good-night, my-" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.

Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.

Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace.

For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.

I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.' - Jane Eyre

I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.

Sir,' I interrupted him, 'you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady; you speak of her with hate --- with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel --- she cannot help being mad.

Nervous alarms should always be communicated, that they may be dissipated.

as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.

Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

Daydreams are the delusions of the devil.

I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you.

I never met your likeness. Jane: you please me, and you master me - you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced - conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph _I_ can win.

...it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.

I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.

Alas! never had I loved him so well!

Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.

Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning.

I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.

It is a long way off, sir" "From what Jane?" "From England and from Thornfield: and ___" "Well?" "From you, sir

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!

He is not to them what he is to me.

Little Jane's love would have been my best reward, without it, my heart is broken.

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England.

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

The word book acted as a transient stimulus

If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.

A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.

As to the thoughts, they are elfish. Those eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream.

After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love--I have found you.

Jane Austin was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it.

I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentleman, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be:Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a flip.

Reader, I married him.

I knew you would do me good in some way, at some time--I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you.

Do you like him much?' I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.' Is he?' All boys are.

I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.

I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.

Jane Eyre "I desired more...than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn't help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.

Am I hideous, Jane? Very, sir: you always were, you know.

I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.

Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

[I]n his presence I thoroughly lived.

Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none

Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations.

Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.

So you shun me? - you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, that your heart has been weeping blood?

He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw.

I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.

Reader, I literally married him.

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.

Her coming was my hope each day, Her parting was my pain; The chance that did her steps delay Was ice in every vein.

Que me voulez-vous?' said he in a growl of which the music was wholly confined to his chest and throat, for he kept his teeth clenched, and seemed registering to himself an inward vow that nothing earthly should wring from him a smile. My answer commenced uncompromisingly: - 'Monsieur,' I said, je veux l'impossible, des choses inouïes.

I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.

Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the same quarter.

When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were - large, brilliant, and black.

Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.