Charlotte Bronte Quotes

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

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.

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!

Good-night, my-" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.

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

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.

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

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

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

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

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

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.

'My bride is here,' Rochester said , again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?'

Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

Remorse is the poison of life.

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

The shadows are as important as the light.

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

Out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion amalgamation.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look twice before you leap.

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.

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 afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself?

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

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

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

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.

Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of life, but the desire of his eyes

I am no bird and no net ensnares me

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed.

If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.

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.

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.

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

A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.

I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.

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

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

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

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.