“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 Brontë
PinLife appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.PinA ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.PinCrying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.PinI try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.PinThere is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.PinI am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.PinThe 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.PinBetter to be without logic than without feeling.PinGod did not give me my life to throw it away.PinI ask you to pass through life at my side – to be my second self, and best earthly companion.
20 Inspirational Charlotte Brontë Quotes About Life
“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? 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. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!”
Charlotte Brontë
PinLife is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.PinIf I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.Pin‘I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die. I will be myself.’PinIf all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.PinMen judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.PinCheerfulness, 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.
“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
Charlotte Brontë
PinWhat you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.PinRemorse is the poison of life.PinThe shadows are as important as the light.PinDie without me if you will. Live for me if you dare.
“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 Brontë
PinLook twice before you leap.PinBetter to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.PinBeauty is in the eye of the gazer.PinFlirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.PinTo talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.PinYour will shall decide your destiny.PinLet your performance do the thinking.
20 Charlotte Brontë Quotes to Ponder
“You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength.”
Charlotte Brontë
PinThere is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.PinMemory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.PinThe soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter – in the eye.PinIt 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.PinIf we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.PinConventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.PinGive him enough rope and he will hang himself.PinI feel monotony and death to be almost the same.PinTrue enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.PinWho has words at the right moment?PinI’m just going to write because I cannot help it.PinI am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me.PinI don’t call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don’t flatter me.PinYou know full well as I do the value of sisters’ affections: There is nothing like it in this world.PinIf you are cast in a different mold to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.PinThe trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.PinHappiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.PinI would always rather be happy than dignified.PinI care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
(MUST READ) Jane Eyre [with Biographical Introduction]