Charlotte Brontë, Villette Quotes
The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
Where the bodily presence is weak and the speech contemptible, surely there cannot be error in making written language the medium of better utterance than faltering lips can achieve?
. . . if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it . . .
This little man was of the order of beings who must not be opposed, unless you possessed an all-dominant force sufficient to crush him at once.
I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains.
The world, I soon learned, held a different estimate: and I make no doubt, the world is very right in its view, yet believe also that I am not quite wrong in mine.
Unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me.
In catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature.
The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle.
This pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart
His veins were dark with a vivid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy.
There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation.
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.