Top 377 Quotes & Sayings by Charlotte Bronte - Page 5

We should acknowledge God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible.

Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!

I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract: I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him.I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered: - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.

I thank my Maker, that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.

What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.

I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night. I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.

Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure - you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.

There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd; and if I were ever again to find myself amongst strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned.

No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day.

I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express." - Jane Eyre

The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of the pitcher which I had flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr Rochester at last though it was dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water. 'Is there a flood?' he cried

What the deuce is to do now?

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night at least, I would be her guest-as I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price.

Monsieur, sit down; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not unchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not trouble your faith; you believe in God and Christ and the Bible, and so do I.

I have for the first time found what I can truly love- I have found you. You are my sympathy-my better self-my good angel-I am bound to you with a strong attachment.

Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of life, but the desire of his eyes

What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?

I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment: but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder-how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take vital interest.

Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life — if ever I thought a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer — if ever I wished a righteous wish — I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.

Now it is not everybody, even amongst our respected friends and esteemed acquaintance, whom we like to have near us, whom we like to watch us, to wait on us, to approach us with the proximity of a nurse to a patient. It is not every friend whose eye is a light in a sickroom, whose presence is there a solace.

The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.

When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart.

He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine- I am sure he is- I feel akin to him- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.

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!

You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.

"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." "More than girls?" "Very likely."

Everyone else is just cocktails.

The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint; the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him

I don't wish to treat you like an inferior: that is (correcting himself), I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in experience.

One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

It seems to me, Monsieur, that there is nothing more galling in great physical misfortunes than to be compelled to make all those about us share in our sufferings. The ills of the soul one can hide, but those which attack the body and destroy the faculties cannot be concealed.

It is strange,' pursued he, 'that while I love Rosomond Oliver so wildly-with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and fascinating--I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness, that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.

You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream

It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate.

God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest.

The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however, well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals.

They will both be happy, and I do not grudge them their bliss; but I groan under my own misery: some of my suffering is very acute. Truly, I ought not to have been born: they should have smothered me at first cry.

Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm.

My God, whose son, as on this night, took on Him the form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controls thy hand, and without His behest, thou canst not strike a stroke. My God is sinless, eternal, all-wise, and in Him is my trust, and though stripped and crushed by thee, -though naked, desolate, void of resource- I do not despair:where the lance of Guthrum now wet with my blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray: Jehovah, in His own time, will aid.

If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed.

Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive.

The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights and sounds. The City is getting its living - the West-End but enjoying its pleasure.

We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.

No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by.

Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before 'the writing on the wall' and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation.

There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.

Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing.

Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.

I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms: you wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Jane?

I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.

If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith Pope (if you will though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works are like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finestpassages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice.

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed.

'My bride is here,' Rochester said , again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?'

Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Jane.

I have no wish to talk nonsense." "If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.

It is always the way of events in this life,...no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.

This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring.

I was no pope - I could not boast infallibility.