Charlotte Brontë

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert 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!

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is …

I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him …

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure — an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?

I don't think, sir, that you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

It is in 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.

I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.

I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse …

It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from …

School-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies — such was what I knew of existence.

By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.

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.

What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me.

I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.

What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart... Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in …

It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury. … Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how he acts — make his word your rule, and his conduct your example. … Love your …

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 …

I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me …

It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.

appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines