Charlotte Brontë

“Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning.”

“Into the hands of common sense I confided the matter. Common sense, however, was as chilled and bewildered as all my other faculties, and it was only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that she spasmodically executed her trust.”

“My reader, I know, is one who would not thank me for an elaborate reproduction of poetic first impressions; and it is well, inasmuch as I had neither time nor mood to cherish such; arriving as I did late, on a dark, raw, and rainy evening, in a Babylon and a wilderness, of which the vastness and the strangeness tried to the utmost any powers of clear thought and steady self-possession with which, in the absence of more brilliant faculties, Nature might have gifted me.”

“There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever.”

“Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft.”

“It agitates me that the skyline there is forever our limit, I long for the power of unlimited vision...If I could behold all I imagine.”

“I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in ME--not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands--it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.”

“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?”

“I never liked long walks”

“Tú, tú, extraña, criatura celeste, a ti es a quien amo como a mí mismo. Tú, pobre y oscura, pequeña y sencilla, eres quien quiero que me acepte por esposo.”

“—Jane, quédese todavía. No se revuelva como un pájaro huraño que pierde sus plumas contra los alambres de la jaula. —Yo no soy pájaro, ni se me enjaula; soy un ser humano, con una voluntad libre, que ahora ejerzo para separarme de usted.”

“Así es siempre el camino de la vida. Tan pronto como se ha encontrado un lugar donde descansar, una voz extraña e imperativa le ordena a uno levantarse y marchar, porque la hora del descanso ha concluido”

“En una palabra pueden encerrarse todos los deseos del corazón.”

“Yo conocí desde el primer instante en que la vi a usted que sería mi mejor ángel, que tendría algo que agradecerle: lo leí en sus ojos y en su sonrisa. Se habla de simpatías naturales, he oído hablar de los genios benéficos y creo que hay algo de verdad en las fábulas. ¡Mi Genio Protector, buenas noches!”

“Veo, a veces, la curiosa mirada del pájaro a través de los alambres de la jaula, que vívido, resuelto, infatigable y cautivo está allí; cuando sea libre volará alto.”

“Cuando le venga una tentación, señorita, tema el remordimiento, que es el veneno de la vida”

“The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth—to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines.”

“appearance should not be mistaken for truth”

“No es la violencia quien desarraiga el odio, ni la venganza quien lava la injuria”

“You,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.”

“Don’t talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she isnot worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sistersshould associate with her.”Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at alldeliberating on my words—“They are not fit to associate with me!”

“Superstition was with me at that moment, but it was not yet her hour for complete victory.”

“Las personas reservadas muchas veces necesitan más que las expansivas hablar abiertamente de sus sentimientos y penas. Incluso el estoico más firme es humano, e irrumpir con valor en el mar silencioso de sus almas, a menudo supone hacerles el mayor favor”

“The standard heroes and heroines of novels, are personages in whom I could never, from childhood upwards, take an interest, believe to be natural, or wish to imitate: were I obliged to copy these characters, I would simply -- not write at all. Were I obliged to copy any former novelist, even the greatest, even Scott, in anything , I would not write -- Unless I have something of my own to say, and a way of my own to say it in, I have no business to publish; unless I can look beyond the greatest Masters, and study Nature herself, I have no right to paint; unless I can have the courage to use the language of Truth in preference to the jargon of Conventionality, I ought to be silent.”

“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like thesternness and stillness of the world under this frost.”

“You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings - I do indeed, I have often thought so - and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange, they are not half sufficiently guarded from temptation - Girls are protected as if they were something very frail and silly indeed while boys are turned loose on the world as if they - of all beings in existence, were the wisest and the least liable to be led astray.”

“Apoi, sufletul i se aseza pe buze si cuvintele se revarsara.”

“Si-atunci, de ce sa ne lasam prada disperarii, cand viata se termina atat de curand si moartea este o intrare atat de sigura in fericire - in slava?”

“Pedepsiti-i trupul pentru a-i salva sufletul..”

“Nu prin violenta infrangi cel mai bine ura - si, cu siguranta, nici cu o razbunare nu vindeci ranile.”

“But I do think hardly of you...and I'll tell you why--not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no 'brass' and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.”

“Do you think that I am a machine? That I can bear it?Do you think because I'm poor, plain, obsure, and littlethat I have no heart? That I'm without soul?I have as much heart as you and as much soul.And if God had given me as much beauty and wealth,I would make it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you.”

“Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to drawso near to him?” I asked myself. “Surely she cannot truly like him, or notlike him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles solavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate,graces so multitudinous.”

“Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.”

“I verily believe all that is desirable on earth--wealth, reputation, love--will for ever to you be the ripe grapes on the high trellis: you'll look up at them; they will tantalize in you the lust of the eye; but they are out of reach: you have not the address to fetch a ladder, and you'll go away calling them sour.”

“that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master”

“Jane accept me quickly. Say, Edward — give me my name — Edward — I will marry you.”

“Because I want to read your countenance — turn!”

“It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot.”

“To speak truth, reader, there is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no refinement, without strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy.”

“I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.”

“strange that I should choose you for the confidante of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera - mistress to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you!”

“I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness - yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am”

“you think all existence lapses in a quiet flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away”

“Was I gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to decieve myself, I must reply -- No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt -- yes, idiot that I am -- I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw around me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong -- that is a great step gained. I shall strive to overcome them.”

“It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls her pride to her aid, desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes and resolves to meet the false one that night at the ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanor, how little his desertion has affected her.”

“I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures as well as its thorns and toils.”

“I will do my best: it is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.”

“What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under new circumstances.”

“I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much.”