Charlotte Brontë Quotes

Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.How do you know? -- how can you guess all this, sir?I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rock; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disc; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn bloom.

~ Charlotte Brontë

I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ . . . ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered--not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

~ Charlotte Brontë

Graham’s thoughts of me were not entirely those of a frozen indifference, after all. I believe in that goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place under the skylights where Lucy might have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over the door of which was written ‘Lucy’s Room.’ I kept a place for him too — a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my hand — yet, released from that hold and constriction, I knew not but its innate capacity for expanse might have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Once I saw Graham - wholly unconscious of her proximity - push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot.

~ Charlotte Brontë

How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.

~ Charlotte Brontë

As I exclaimed 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice- I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was- replied, 'I am coming: wait for me;' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words- 'Where are you?' I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. 'Where are you?' seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents- as certain as I live- they were yours! Reader, it was on Monday night- near midnight- that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it.(Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre)

~ Charlotte Brontë

Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Lingerer, my brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!

~ Charlotte Brontë

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.

~ Charlotte Brontë

The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway; and asserting a right to predominate: to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes,--and to speak.

~ Charlotte Brontë

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

~ Charlotte Brontë

. . . nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are . . .

~ Charlotte Brontë

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.

~ Charlotte Brontë

You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.

~ Charlotte Brontë

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.

~ Charlotte Brontë

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

~ Charlotte Brontë

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

~ Charlotte Brontë

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

~ Charlotte Brontë

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.

~ Charlotte Brontë

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Look twice before you leap.

~ Charlotte Brontë

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

~ Charlotte Brontë