Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Charlotte Brontë

Quote by Charlotte Brontë

Work

Villette

Villette is a semi-autobiographical novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1853. The story follows the life of Lucy Snowe, a young woman who leaves her home in Yorkshire to pursue a career as a teacher in the fictional city of Villette. The novel explores themes of independence, love, and the search for identity, as Lucy navigates the complexities of her personal and professional life. more

Author

Charlotte Brontë

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Charlotte Brontë. more

You May Also Like

“Bartholomeus went on, 'I wanted to show that these objects are sensitive, suffer at the coming of night, faint at the departure of the last rays, which, by the way, also live in this room; they suffer as much, they fight against the darkness. There you have it. It's the life of things, if you like. The French would call it a nature morte, a picture of inanimate objects. That is not what I'm trying to show. Flemish puts it better: a still life.”

“Worte sind die blassen Schatten vergessener Namen. Und wie Namen Macht innewohnt, wohnt auch Worten Macht inne. Mit Worten kann man im Geist der Menschen Feuer entfachen. Mit Worten kann man selbst dem hartherzigsten Menschen Tränen entlocken. Es gibt sieben Worte, die einen Menschen dazu bringen, dich zu lieben. Und es gibt zehn Worte, mit denen man den Willen selbst des stärksten Mannes brechen kann. Aber ein Wort ist weiter nichts als die bildliche Darstellung eines Feuers. Ein Name ist das Feuer selbst.”

“Also there were people going round in such clumsy ways, stopping and starting, and hordes of schoolchildren like the ones I used to keep in order. Why so many of them and so idiotic with their yelps and yells and the redundancy, the sheer un-necessity of their existence, Everywhere an insult in your face. As the shops and their signs were an insult, and the noise of the cars with their stops and starts. Everywhere the proclaiming, this is life. As if we needed, more of life.”

“Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: ‘What morality do they (or does he) aim at?’ Accordingly, I do not believe that an ‘impulse to knowledge’ is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious and, as such, attempts to philosophize.”