Charlotte Bronte
Rapidly, merrily, Life's sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly!Collection: Sunny
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.Collection: Encouragement
To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only.Collection: Men
That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.Collection: Foundation
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.Collection: Freedom
I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.Collection: Pain
Jane Austin was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it.Collection: Austin
Everyone else is just cocktails.Collection: Cocktails
What the deuce is to do now?Collection: Deuces
We should acknowledge God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible.Collection: Should
I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express." - Jane EyreCollection: Trust Myself
What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.Collection: Running
Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of life, but the desire of his eyesCollection: Eye
What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?Collection: Past
"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." "More than girls?" "Very likely."Collection: Girl
Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life — if ever I thought a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer — if ever I wished a righteous wish — I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.Collection: Prayer
Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure - you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.Collection: Fate
There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd; and if I were ever again to find myself amongst strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned.Collection: Stranger
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.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Rocks
Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.Collection: Silly
Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.Collection: Dying
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.Collection: God
You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.Collection: Looks
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.Collection: I Like You
No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day.Collection: Nerves
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.Collection: Creativity
I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much.Collection: Lonely
God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest.Collection: Believe
It seems to me, Monsieur, that there is nothing more galling in great physical misfortunes than to be compelled to make all those about us share in our sufferings. The ills of the soul one can hide, but those which attack the body and destroy the faculties cannot be concealed.Collection: Soul
I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman.Collection: Judging
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Kindness
I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Heart
The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.Collection: Men
I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller significance what I have always said in theory - Wait God's will.Collection: Waiting
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.Collection: Husband
Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.Collection: People
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.Collection: Hate
I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.Collection: Flattery
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.Collection: Disappointment
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.Collection: Crush
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Regret
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.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Fashion
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Love