Charlotte Brontë - Villette (1853)

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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life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced.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
To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.

Charlotte Brontë
The cool peace and dewy sweetness of the night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point, but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.

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
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
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
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
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.

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

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
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
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
The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof.

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not follow? Rosy or fiery, she mounted now above a not distant bank; even while we watched her flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, and in a very brief space, floated up stainless into a now calm sky.

Charlotte Brontë
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.

Charlotte Brontë
Out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion amalgamation.

Charlotte Brontë
I would have praised him: I had plenty of praise in my heart; but alas! no words on my lips. Who has words at the right moment?

Charlotte Brontë
I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily fed as to be always upon the verge of famine, await their food as I awaited a letter... The letter — the well-beloved letter — would not come; and it was all of sweetness in life I had to look for.

Charlotte Brontë
His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss.

Charlotte Brontë
Take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.

Charlotte Brontë
The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.

Charlotte Brontë
I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.

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

Charlotte Brontë
I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.

Charlotte Brontë
If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.

Charlotte Brontë
I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?

Charlotte Brontë