“Alas! never had I loved him so well!”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.”
Source: Jane Eyre
“Jane Eyre "I desired more...than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn't help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
“You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this - if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to new.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.”
Source: Shirley and The Professor
“Rochester: "I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard…And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?" Jane: "You are no ruin sir - no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.”
“I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy." Mr. Rochester”
“Life is still life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced.”
Source: Villette
“To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Little Jane's love would have been my best reward, without it, my heart is broken.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“It would not be wicked to love me." "It would to obey you.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“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.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”
Source: Jane Eyre
“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”
“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.”
Source: Villette
“I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“You are human and fallible.”
Source: The Complete Works Of Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor
“He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. 'Oh, Jane! my hope - my love - my life!' broke in anguish from his lips.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,--a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations.”
Source: Jane Eyre: Easyread Large Edition
“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.”
Source: Villette
“I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.”
Source: Villette
“You mocking changeling- fairy-born and human-bred!”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life—November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect.”
Source: Shirley and The Professor
“That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.”
Source: Shirley and The Professor
“What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“[I]n his presence I thoroughly lived.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.”
Source: The Complete Works Of Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor
“To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.”
Source: Jane Eyre
“Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.”
Source: Jane Eyre: Englische Originalausgabe
“The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none”
Source: Villette
“There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest man on being casually taken for a housebreaker does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?”
Source: Villette
“I would not be you for a kingdom.' The remark was too naïve to rouse anger; I merely said - 'Very good.' 'And what would you give to be ME?' she inquired. 'Not a bad sixpence - strange as it may sound', I replied. 'You are but a poor creature.' 'You don't think so in your heart.' 'No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.”
“If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.”
Source: Villette: Easyread Large Edition
“Que me voulez-vous?' said he in a growl of which the music was wholly confined to his chest and throat, for he kept his teeth clenched, and seemed registering to himself an inward vow that nothing earthly should wring from him a smile. My answer commenced uncompromisingly: - 'Monsieur,' I said, je veux l'impossible, des choses inouïes.”
Source: Villette: Easyread Edition
“His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss.”
Source: Villette: Easyread Edition
“I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.”
Source: Villette: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition
“But solitude is sadness.' 'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.”
Source: Villette: Easyread Large Edition
“... 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.'”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“'I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.' 'And so have I, sir,' I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. 'I could not spare the money on any account.' 'Little niggard!' said he, 'refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.' 'Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.' 'Just let me look at the cash.' 'No, sir; you are not to be trusted.'”
“Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.”
“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”
Source: Jane Eyre
“Rochester: I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.”
Source: Jane Eyre
“Am I hideous, Jane? Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
