English novelist (1816-1855)
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
I don't think, sir, that you have a 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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
attributed, The Life of Charlotte Bronte
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
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 there, firm as weeds among stones.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
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
Jane Eyre
If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Shirley
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Shirley
Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily
Enjoy them as they fly!
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
My bride is here ... because my equal is here, and my likeness.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Remorse is the poison of life.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
I would always rather be happy than dignified.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Flirting is a woman's trade, one must keep in practice.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Shirley