Charlotte Bronte Quotes

A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play.

I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?

I have for the first time found what I can truly love- I have found you. You are my sympathy-my better self-my good angel-I am bound to you with a strong attachment.

His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss.

Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.

Shake me off, then, sir--push me away; for I'll not leave you of my own accord.

What the deuce is to do now?

What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?

I thank my Maker, that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.

The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.

Let your performance do the thinking.

Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.

What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?

To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.

I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller significance what I have always said in theory - Wait God's will.

Who has words at the right moment?

That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.

I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

But solitude is sadness.' 'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.

While I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed!

Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.

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.

To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only.

I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.

I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.

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.

What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me.

... and she held out a pretty gold ring. 'Put it,' she said, 'on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours and you are mine; and we shall leave Earth and make our own Heaven yonder.'

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.

I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.

Adversity is a good school.

Tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world - the ... affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other.

For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.

I Believe she thought I had forgotten my station; and yours, sir.' 'Station! Station!-- your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.

I can but die... and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence.

I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand - they only. Know this at last.

Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you.

Mademoiselle is a fairy," he said, whispering mysteriously.

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

flattery would be worse than vain; there is no consolation in flattery.

Daydreams are the delusions of the devil.

I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.' - Jane Eyre

Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning.

as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.

Nervous alarms should always be communicated, that they may be dissipated.

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England.

For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.

...it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.

Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace.