Charlotte Bronte Quotes (273 Quotes)

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!

It is 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. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot.

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

So you shun me? - you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, that your heart has been weeping blood?

What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling like, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined!

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

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. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

Conventionality is not morality.

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

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

If thy love were like mine, how blest
That twilight hour would seem,
When, back from the regretted Past,
Returned our early dream!

Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming
Of death, and dubious life to come?

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. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

These, then, are thine oaths of passion?

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.

The very wildness of my sorrow
Tells me I yet have innate force;
My track of life has been too narrow,
Effort shall trace a broader course.

Those thoughts recur to early love,
Or what he love would name,
Though haply Gilbert's secret deeds
Might other title claim.

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

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

Will he find love without lust's leaven,
Love fearless, tearless, perfect, pure,
To all with equal bounty given,
In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure?

If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

Love was all a thin illusion;
Joy, but the desert's flying stream;
And, glancing back on long delusion,
My memory grasps a hollow dream.

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

If thy love were like mine, how wild
Thy longings, even to pain,
For sunset soft, and moonlight mild,
To bring that hour again!

Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.

One feeling­turned to utter anguish,
Is not my being's only aim;
When, lorn and loveless, life will languish,
But courage can revive the flame.

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

Knowledge, which, if o'er life it beamed,
Served but to prove it void of worth?

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.

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.

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.

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

Life and marriage I have known,
Things once deemed so bright;
Now, how utterly is flown
Every ray of light!

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

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

Erasure both of pain and bliss?

Reader, I married him.

Ever after that I knew what I was for him and what I might be for the rest of the world, I ceased painfully to care.

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

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

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

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.

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.

No­my will shall yet control
Thy will, so high and free,
And love shall tame that haughty soul­
Yes­tenderest love for me.

Good-night, Dr. John you are good, you are beautiful but you are not mine. Good-night, and God bless you

Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy and zeal, and truth, he labors for his race he clears their painful way to improvement he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern he may be exacting he may be ambitious yet but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says, ''Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.'' His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth -- who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.

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

Let your performance do the thinking.

Look twice before you leap.