Anne Brontë - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

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Whatever my husband's faults may be, it can only aggravate the evil for me to hear them from a stranger's lips.

Anne Brontë
There's nothing like active employment to console the afflicted;

Anne Brontë
She was barely civil to them, and evidently better pleased to say 'goodbye,' than 'how do you do.'

Anne Brontë
He cannot endure Rachel, because he knows she has a proper appreciation of him.

Anne Brontë
God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and Love; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fullness of the Godhead shines.

Anne Brontë
What are their thoughts to you or me, so long as we are satisfied with ourselves - and each other.

Anne Brontë
I sometimes think she has no feeling at all; and then I go on till she cries - and that satisfies me.

Anne Brontë
If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.

Anne Brontë
Increase of love brings increase of happiness, when it is mutual, and pure as that will be.

Anne Brontë
His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind.

Anne Brontë
I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea-drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup.

Anne Brontë
It is a woman's nature to be constant - to love one and one only, blindly, tenderly, and for ever.

Anne Brontë
You may have as many words as you please, – only I can't stay to hear them.

Anne Brontë
I trust she may yet be happy; but, if she is, it will be entirely the reward of her own goodness of heart; for had she chosen to consider herself the victim of fate, or of her mother's worldly wisdom, she might have been thoroughly miserable; and if, for duty's sake, she had not made every effort to love her husband, she would, doubtless, have hated him to the end of her days.

Anne Brontë
Mamma does all she can,' said she, 'to make me feel myself a burden and incumbrance to the family, and the most ungrateful, selfish, and undutiful daughter that ever was born;

Anne Brontë
The bud, though plucked, would not be withered, only transplanted to a fitter soil to ripen and blow beneath a brighter sun; and though I might not cherish and watch my child's unfolding intellect, he would be snatched away from all the suffering and sins of earth; and my understanding tells me this would be no great evil; but my heart shrinks from the contemplation of such a possibility, and whispers I could not bear to see him die.

Anne Brontë
When I spend my money I like to enjoy the full value of it.

Anne Brontë
The greater the happiness that nature sets before me, the more I lament that he is not here to taste it: the greater the bliss we might enjoy together, the more I feel our present wretchedness apart.

Anne Brontë
The demon of drink was as black as the demon of play, and nearly as hard to get rid of - especially as his kind friends did all they could to second the promptings of his own insatiable cravings.

Anne Brontë
It is never too late to reform, as long as you have the sense to desire it, and the strength to execute your purpose.

Anne Brontë
You will form a very inadequate estimate of a man's character, if you judge by what a fond sister says of him. The worst of them generally know how to hide their misdeeds from their sisters' eyes, and their mother's, too.

Anne Brontë
A burst of passion is a fine rousing thing upon occasion, Helen, and a flood of tears is marvellously affecting, but, when indulged too often, they are both deuced plaguy things for spoiling one's beauty and tiring out one's friends.

Anne Brontë
He is very fond of me, almost too fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality. I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose; but I won't complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. I sometimes liken it to a fire of dry twigs and branches compared with one of solid coal, very bright and hot; but if it should burn itself out and leave nothing but ashes behind.

Anne Brontë
'I almost wish I were not a painter,' observed my companion.
'Why so? one would think at such a time you would most exult in your privilege of being able to imitate the various brilliant and delightful touches of nature.'
No; for instead of delivering myself up to the full enjoyment of them as others do, I am always troubling my head about how I could produce the same effect upon canvas; and as that can never be done, it is more vanity and vexation of spirit.'

Anne Brontë
It's well these women must be blabbing. If they haven't a friend to talk to, they must whisper their secrets to the fishes, or write them on the sand or something;

Anne Brontë
I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent's authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue.

Anne Brontë
I perceive, with joy, my most valued friend, that the cloud of your displeasure has past away; the light of your countenance blesses me once more, and you desire the continuation of my story: therefore, without more ado, you shall have it.

Anne Brontë
If you would really study my pleasure, mother, you must consider your own comfort and convenience a little more than you do.

Anne Brontë
At your time of life, it's love that rules the roast: at mine, it's solid, serviceable gold.

Anne Brontë
Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.

Anne Brontë