Charlotte bronte quotes

Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.

Tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

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.

That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.

I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman.

Enjoy the blessings Heaven bestows, Assist his friends, forgive his foes; Trust God, and keep his statutes still, Upright and firm, through good and ill; Thankful for all that God has given, Fixing his firmest hopes on heaven; Knowing that earthly joys decay, But hoping through the darkest day.

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.

I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.

The idea of seeing the sea - of being near it - watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday - in calm, perhaps in storm - fills and satisfies my mind.

What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.

I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

You transfix me quite.

To the dear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break... I am ever tender and true.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.

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.

Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star.

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.

The shadows are as important as the light.

I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.

Unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.

Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.

Misery generates hate.

Beauty is in the eye of the gazer.

I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends!

I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.

Neither birth nor sex forms a limit to genius.

Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season.

But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.

Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.

Remorse is the poison of life.

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.

It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.

All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.

To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only.

Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation.

Die without me if you will. Live for me if you dare.

Spring drew on... and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.

I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.

Men, in general, are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea.

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent.

You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme -- and when you so give yourself -- you lose appetite ans sleep -- it cannot be helped --

A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. 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.

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.

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter - in the eye.

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

I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.

Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere.

If there is one notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriage - I mean marriage in the vulgar, weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment.

Who has words at the right moment?

Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.

Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day.

What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?

Adversity is a good school.

To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.

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.

You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world.

Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

I am no bird and no net ensnares me

If you don't love another living soul, then you'll never be disappointed.

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.

While I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed!

Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!

Make my happiness--I will make yours.

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.

The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.

I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.

I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation." "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.

Rapidly, merrily, Life's sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly!

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

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

I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.

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

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.

Old maids like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and the rich.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.

It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

God did not give me my life to throw it away.

I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.

My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.

It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this - if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to new.

I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller significance what I have always said in theory - Wait God's will.

You are human and fallible.

I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

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.

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.

as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.

Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.

I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest - a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

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

Look twice before you leap.

I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

Let your performance do the thinking.

Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

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

Your will shall decide your destiny.

To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.

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.

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!

Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go to Ireland, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly.