Charlotte Bronte famous quotes

A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#People #Wicked #Desire

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!
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Heartbreak #Saying Goodbye #Thinking

I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends!
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Enemy

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Inspirational #Motivational #Moving Forward

Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation." "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Struggle #Independent #Bird

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Happiness #Feelings #Comfort

He made me love him without looking at me.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Made

Die without me if you will. Live for me if you dare.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Love #Dream #Dare

I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Love #Integrity #Women

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

#Life #Forgiveness #Hate

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

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Writing #Helping

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Single #Lonely #Loneliness

I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Selfish #Laughing #Soul

When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Reason #Should #Strikes

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Possibility #Walks

Better to be without logic than without feeling.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Life #Thinking #Feelings

I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Break Up #Heartbroken #Heart

Remorse is the poison of life.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Regret #Poison #Remorse

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Life #Success #Expectations

Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Personality #Matter #States

God did not give me my life to throw it away.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Giving

The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Men #Worry #Mind

Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go to Ireland, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Fashion #Distance #Heart

It is in 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.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Action #Tranquility #Vain

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Lying #Years #Creative

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Brother #Exercise #Men

But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Fighting #Feminism #Battle

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 Bronte

#Broken Heart #Dream #Silence

Little Jane's love would have been my best reward, without it, my heart is broken.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Heart #Broken #Littles

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Love #Romantic #Pain

I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Self #Giving #Soul

Look twice before you leap.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Life #Looks #Leap

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 Bronte

#Education #Weed #Nature

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

#Friendship #Foundation #Sake

You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Love You #Sleep #Missing

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Self #Independence #Lasts

There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Sorrow #Vision #Arms

I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Strong #Powerful #Spring

Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Stars #Loneliness #Wings

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Happiness #Taste

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

#Congratulations #Men #Judging

I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Freedom #Women #Thinking

Spring drew on... and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Morning #Spring #Night

It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Thank You #Doe #Answers

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Cost #May #Lovers

I would always rather be happy than dignified.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Love #Inspiring #Women

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

#Hate #Overcoming #Violence

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#Dream #Sleep #Insomnia

I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.
-- Charlotte Bronte

#I Love You #Beauty #Love You