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: Judgment, Feelings, Attitude, Judging
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Sleep
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: Revenge, Vengeance
But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well.
—Charlotte Bronte
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
You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Marriage, Husbands
There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Custom
Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Consistency
As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance – who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread – they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny – ate the bread and drank the waters of affliction.
Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Poverty
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Women
A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Memory
Better to be without logic than without feeling.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Thinking, Logic
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: Friends, Friendship
Indisputably a great, good, handsome man is the first of created things.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Man
Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy and zeal, and truth, he labors for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says, “Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth—who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Evangelism
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, Authors & Writing, Writers
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
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
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
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
Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Happiness
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Expectations, Expectation, Realistic Expectations, Events
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
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
If 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
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Guilt
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
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: Grieving, Grief
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.
—Charlotte Bronte
Topics: Anger, Faith
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
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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