English novelist (1816-1855)
To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
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
Villette
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
Villette
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
"Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas"
The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
attributed, Complete Novels of the Bronte Sisters
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure--its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave forever.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Professor
Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
letter to G. H. Lewes, November 6, 1847
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely entrusted.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Professor
Life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Letters of Charlotte Bronte
I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
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
Villette
There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Villette
We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;
We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age--
Are they withered in the sod?
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
"From Retrospection"