Anne Brontë - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

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A girl's affections should never be won unsought.

Anne Brontë
I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.

Anne Brontë
You will have no credit for your virtue (if you call it such): even your best friends will not believe in it; because it is monstrous, and not to be credited but by those who suffer, from the effects of it, such cruel torments that they know it to be indeed reality.

Anne Brontë
The more you loved your God the more deep and pure and true would be your love to me.

Anne Brontë
This paper will serve instead of a confidential friend into whose ear I might pour forth the overflowings of my heart. It will not sympathise with my distresses, but then it will not laugh at them, and, if I keep it close, it cannot tell again; so it is, perhaps, the best friend I could have for the purpose.

Anne Brontë
A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can't complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.

Anne Brontë
In the first place, I don't believe you,' answered I;: 'in the second, if you will be such a fool, I can't hinder it.

Anne Brontë
Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

Anne Brontë
She is not determined to forget me. It would be wrong to forget one so deeply and fondly devoted to her, who can so thoroughly appreciate her excellencies, and sympathise with all her thoughts, as I can do, and it would be wrong in me to forget so excellent and divine a piece of God's creation as she, when I have once so truly loved and known her.

Anne Brontë
It is painful to doubt the sincerity of those we love.

Anne Brontë
I am truly miserable - more so than I like to acknowledge to myself. Pride refuses to aid me. It has brought me into the scrape, and will not help me out of it.

Anne Brontë
This is double selfishness displayed to me and to the victims of his former love.

Anne Brontë
There goes the dinner-bell, and here comes my aunt to scold me for sitting here at my desk all day, instead of staying with the company: wish the company were - gone.

Anne Brontë
It's well to have such a comfortable assurance regarding the worth of those we love. I only wish you may not find your confidence misplaced.

Anne Brontë
I was not really angry: I felt for him all the time, and longed to be reconciled; but I determined he should make the first advances, or at least show some signs of an humble and contrite spirit, first; for, if I began, it would only minister to his self-conceit, increase his arrogance, and quite destroy the lesson I wanted to give him.

Anne Brontë
God have mercy on his miserable soul! and make him see and feel his guilt - I ask no other vengeance! If he could but fully know and truly feel my wrongs I should be well avenged, and I could freely pardon all.

Anne Brontë
'I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.'
'That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us.'

Anne Brontë
I do believe a young lady can't be too careful who she marries.

Anne Brontë
My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can.

Anne Brontë
When a lady does consent to listen to an argument against her own opinions, she is always predetermined to withstand it - to listen only with her bodily ears, keeping the mental organs resolutely closed against the strongest reasoning.

Anne Brontë
You've been weeping, I see - that's our grand resource, you know. But doesn't it make your eyes smart? and do you always find it to answer?

Anne Brontë
Though I hate him from my heart, and should rejoice at any calamity that could befall him, I'll leave him to God; and though I abhor my own life, I'll leave that, too, to Him that gave it.

Anne Brontë
If ever I am a mother I will zealously strive against this crime of over- indulgence. I can hardly give it a milder name when I think of the evils it brings.

Anne Brontë
Instead of combating my slight prejudice against you as uncharitable, I mean to cherish it, until I am convinced that I have no reason to distrust this kind, insinuating friendship you are so anxious to push upon me.

Anne Brontë
Friends as we are, we would willingly keep your failings to ourselves - even from ourselves if we could, unless by knowing them we could deliver you from them.

Anne Brontë
I'll promise to think twice before I take any important step you seriously disapprove of.

Anne Brontë
God will judge us by our own thoughts and deeds, not by what others say about us.

Anne Brontë
I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other; besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single propensity.

Anne Brontë
His idea of a wife is a thing to love one devotedly, and to stay at home - to wait upon her husband, and amuse him and minister to his comfort in every possible way, while he chooses to stay with her; and, when he is absent, to attend to his interests, domestic or otherwise, and patiently wait his return; no matter how he may be occupied in the meantime.

Anne Brontë
If you loved as I do,' she earnestly replied, 'you would not have so nearly lost me - these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you - you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.

Anne Brontë