Charlotte Brontë Quotes

278 Sourced Quotes

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

Charlotte Brontë
All these relics gave... Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine to memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old-English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings, — all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.

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

Charlotte Brontë
I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.

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

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
You may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep you from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage.

Charlotte Brontë
There's no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There's such a thing as keeping,
A remembrance in one's heart...

Charlotte Brontë
I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.

Charlotte Brontë
To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.

Charlotte Brontë
Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.

Charlotte Brontë
Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will not, meet the expectation.

Charlotte Brontë
But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself?

Charlotte Brontë
I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.

Charlotte Brontë
A depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every new page I have turned in life.

Charlotte Brontë
I would not be you for a kingdom.' The remark was too naïve to rouse anger; I merely said - 'Very good.' 'And what would you give to be ME?' she inquired. 'Not a bad sixpence - strange as it may sound', I replied. 'You are but a poor creature.' 'You don't think so in your heart.' 'No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.

Charlotte Brontë
If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.

Charlotte Brontë
Life is still life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced.

Charlotte Brontë
Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.

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

Charlotte Brontë
School-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies — such was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me at least a new servitude!" Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.

Charlotte Brontë
What animal magnetism drew thee and me together—I know not.

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust; the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should — so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

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

Charlotte Brontë
"I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it."

Charlotte Brontë
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow...

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.

Charlotte Brontë
What is this Hebrew Christ? To me unknown,
His lineage—doctrine—mission—yet how clear,
Is God-like goodness, in his actions shewn!
How straight and stainless is his life's career!
The ray of Deity that rests on him,
In my eyes makes Olympian glory dim.

Charlotte Brontë