Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Reason
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.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Vengeance, Revenge
There’s no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There’s such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one’s heart…
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Grief, Grieving
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. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
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 Bronte
Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Happiness
It 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.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Action
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Friendship, Friends
Let your performance do the thinking.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Thinking, Action, Performance
Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Consistency
One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Inheritance
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
Topics: Heart
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 there, firm as weeds among stones.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Prejudice
A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Memory
But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well.
—Charlotte Bronte
There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Custom
Indisputably a great, good, handsome man is the first of created things.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Man
Memory 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.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Youth
Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Feelings, Judging, Judgment, Attitude
Better to be without logic than without feeling.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Thinking, Logic
I tell you I must go! Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?. 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!
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Freedom
When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were—large, brilliant and black.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Children
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Sleep
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Respect
Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Judgement
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Events, Expectations, Expectation
You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Husbands, Marriage
Certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Weather
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Faith, Anger
Look twice before you leap.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Caution
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Anne Bronte English Novelist, Poet
- Emily Bronte English Novelist, Poet
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon English Novelist
- George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) English Novelist
- Ouida (Maria Louise Rame) English Novelist
- Charles Reade British Author
- Frances Hodgson Burnett British Novelist, Playwright
- Mary Shelley English Novelist
- Elizabeth Gaskell English Novelist
- Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie English Novelist, Biographer
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