Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

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

"His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows."

"Endurance over-goaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition."

"I will bestir myself,' was her resolution, 'and try to be wise if I cannot be good."

"Existence was never originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me among the rest."

"He did not yet known how many commenced lefe-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter."

"In her past were sweet passages, in her future rosy hopes."

". . . at eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to becommenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvelous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dreamscenes; darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bearswitness to its unutterable beauty!"

"Gratitude is a divine emotion. It fills the heart, not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever. I like to taste leisurely of bliss. Devoured in haste, I do not know its flavor."

". . . they would neither hate nor envy us if they did not deem us so much happier than themselves."

"Having a large world of his own in his own head and heart, he tolerated confinement to a small, still corner of the real world very patiently."

"Strange that grief should now almost choke me, because another human being's eye has failed to greet mine."

"Her book has perhaps been a good one; it has refreshed, refilled, rewarmed her heart; it has set her brain astir, furnished her mind with pictures."

"Every joy that life gives must be earned ere it be secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who have wrestled for great prizes. The heart’s blood must gem with red beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles over it."

"Our power of being happy lies a good deal in ourselves, I believe."

"I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me."

"No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne."I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you."She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsm"

"At heart, he could not abide sense in women: he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible; because they were then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to be,--inferior: toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and to be thrown away."

"There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that"Are you a young lady"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated."

"If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend."