Charlotte Brontë

"Life is so constructed that the event does not cannot will not match the expectation."

"Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness it has no taste."

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

"Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time as aromatic wine it seemed on swallowing warm and racy its after-flavor metallic and corroding gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned."

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong."

"Better to be without logic than without feeling."

"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."

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

"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?"

"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child, he began, especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?They go to hell, was my ready and orthodox answer. And what is hell? Can you tell me that?A pit full of fire. And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?No, sir. What must you do to avoid it?I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: I must keep in good health and not die."

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

"All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever."

"It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still. Because, he said, I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near 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 some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me."

"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."

"“We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”"

"(...)because Miss Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain.”“Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?”“Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.”“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 sothey 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.”“You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.”“But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”“Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.” “How? I don’t understand.”“It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”“What then?”“Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.”“What does He say?”“Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you."

"Mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now."

"Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still"

"Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence."

"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."