Charlotte Brontë Quotes

278 Sourced Quotes

I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest — blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine.

Charlotte Brontë
You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance - a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage - forget it.

Charlotte Brontë
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

Charlotte Brontë
There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest man on being casually taken for a housebreaker does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?

Charlotte Brontë
On the contrary, I'm a universal patriot, if you could understand me rightly: my country is the world.

Charlotte Brontë
I have twice seen Macready act; once in Macbeth and once in Othello. I astounded a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not like him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is, the stage-system altogether is hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do them justice. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation.

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I've a use for it.' 'And so have I, sir,' I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. 'I could not spare the money on any account.' 'Little niggard!' said he, 'refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.' 'Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.' 'Just let me look at the cash.' 'No, sir; you are not to be trusted.

Charlotte Brontë
I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand - they only. Know this at last.

Charlotte Brontë
If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity.

Charlotte Brontë
Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?

Charlotte Brontë
Thank you for your letter; it was as pleasant as a quiet chat, as welcome as spring showers, as reviving as a friend's visit; in short, it was very like a page of 'Cranford.'

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

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

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
Better to be without logic than without feeling.

Charlotte Brontë
I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.

Charlotte Brontë
What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me.

Charlotte Brontë
You — you strange — you almost unearthly thing! — I love as my own flesh. You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.

Charlotte Brontë
My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world — the... affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other.

Charlotte Brontë
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Charlotte Brontë
I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

Charlotte Brontë
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.

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

Charlotte Brontë
Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.

Charlotte Brontë
"Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"
I could risk no sort of answer by this time; my heart was full.
"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."

Charlotte Brontë
Jane, I never meant to wound you thus...Will you ever forgive me?" Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.

Charlotte Brontë
I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [... ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered—not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Charlotte Brontë