Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!
CHARLOTTE BRONTEWhen 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.
More Charlotte Bronte Quotes
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Adversity is a good school.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
It is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
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 nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before ‘the writing on the wall’ and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
You transfix me quite.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
You — you strange — you almost unearthly thing! — I love as my own flesh. You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE