Charlotte Brontë Quotes

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

I have an inward treasure born within me which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford.

I'm a universal patriot...my country is the world.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.

Mr Brocklehurst: Do you know where the wicked go after death?Jane Eyre: They go to hell, was my ready and orthodox answer.. . . Mr: What must you do to avoid it? Jane: [Thinking] I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come was objectionable: " I must keep in good health , and not die.

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture — still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish.

Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library.  This book I had again and again perused with delight. 

Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.  I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.