Charlotte Brontë

“It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.”

“[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.”

“It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me-she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life-only the second time-I became insensible from terror.”

“Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour- -suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next- -or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?”

“I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.”

“It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more.”

“Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry…”

“Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"I could risk no sort of answer by this time; my heart was full."Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

“All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not a naturally silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”

“I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.”

“Life, however, was yet in my possession; with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried, and want provided for, the suffering endured, the responsibility fulfilled.”

“When do you wish to go?”“Early to-morrow morning, sir.”“Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I daresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the world, Jane?” he asked, smiling.I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,” said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change.“I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.”I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as if recollecting something, he said—“Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not plenty?”“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”“Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.”“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity.”“Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.”“You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married?”“Yes; what then?”“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.”“To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to—the devil?”“I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.”“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?”“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.”

“My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol.”

“I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.""We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.”

“Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.”

“Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”

“Decidedly he has had too much wine,' I thought”

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”

“Am I hideous, Jane?Very, sir: you always were, you know.”

“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.”

“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”

“-¿Cómo no se estremece? -Porque no tengo frío. -¿Cómo no palidece? -Porque no estoy mal.-¿Cómo no quería consultar mi ciencia? -Porque no soy una necia.La vieja emitió una carcajada cavernosa. Luego sacó una corta pipa y empezó a fumar. Después de haberse entregado a este placer, irguió su encorvado cuerpo, se quitó la pipa de los labios y, mirando fijamente el fuego, dijo subrayando las palabras:-Usted tiene frío, usted está enferma y usted es una necia.-Pruébemelo -dije.-Lo haré en pocas palabras. Tiene usted frío porque está muy sola; está mal, porque le falta el mejor de los sentimientos, el mayor y más dulce que puede experimentar el hombre, y es usted necia porque, sufriendo como sufre, no da una muestra ni inicia un paso para reunirse con el que la espera.”

“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." - Helen Burns”

“I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades — stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise: spoke thus — then towering, became a star, and vanished into his own Heaven. His legacy was suspense — a worse boon than despair.”

“I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution -- such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight -- to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood -- no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet -- That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength.”

“After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love--I have found you.”

“I write because I cannot NOT write.”

“That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart—'My daughter, flee temptation.''Mother, I will.'So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream.”

“To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.”

“I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of the gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.”

“When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were - large, brilliant, and black.”

“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”

“Swifts, on a fine morning in May, flying this way, that way, sailing around at a great hight, perfectly happily. Then, one leaps onto the back of another, grasps tightly and forgetting to fly they both sink down and down, in a great dying fall, fathom after fathom, until the female utters a loud, piercing cry of ecstasy.”

“I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they had nor could have sympathy with anything in me...”

“Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.”

“I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth and grace - for never to any else shall I seem to possess these charms.”

“I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked.”

“I wish I had only offered youa 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.”

“You are my sympathy - my better self - my good angel; I am bound to you by a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely; a fervant, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you - and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

“... 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.' ”

“He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine- I am sure he is- I feel akin to him- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.”

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

“It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”

“Have you heard from his lordship lately?” I asked.“Oh no! About six months ago I had indeed one little note, but I gave it to Macara by mistake, and really I don’t know what became of it afterwards.”“Did Macara express hot sentiment of incipient jealousy on thus accidentally learning that you had not entirely dropped all correspondence with the noble Earl?”“Yes. He said he thought the note was very civilly expressed, and wished me to answer it in terms equally polite.”“Good! And you did so?”“Of course. I penned an elegant billet on a sheet of rose-tinted note-paper, and sealed it with a pretty green seal bearing the device of twin hearts consumed by the same flame. Some misunderstanding must have occurred, though, for in two or three days afterwards I received it back unopened and carefully enclosed in a cover. The direction was not in his lordship’s hand-writing: Macara told me he thought it was the Countess’s.”

“I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of masters (him before me always excepted)--a deity, which sometimes, under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream of electricity, the irrational demon would wake unsolicited, would stir strangely alive, would rush from its pedestral like a perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour--to its victim for some blood or some breath, whatever the circumstance or scene--rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticanation, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant--yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark veins.”

“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.”

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

“I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.”

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

“With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved, by winning that prize, your right to look higher. But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life -- no true home -- nothing to be dearer to me than myself and by its paramount preciousness, to draw from me better things than I care to culture for myself only? Nothing, at whose feet I can willingly lay down the whole burden of human egotism, and gloriously take up the nobler charge of labouring and living for others? I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of your life is not to be so rounded: for you the crescent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a huge mass of my fellow- creatures in no better circumstances. I see that a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few favoured. 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.”