WIST Quotations

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre (1847)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre (1847)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 12 [Jane] (1847)

Dave — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 04:23:04 +0000

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.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 12 [Jane] (1847)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 12 [Jane] (1847)

Dave — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 21:22:35 +0000

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 Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 12 [Jane] (1847)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 14 (1847)

Dave — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:42:27 +0000

Remorse is the poison of life.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 14 (1847)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 29 (1847)

Dave — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 01:37:37 +0000

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 Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 29 (1847)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 6 (1847)

Dave — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:08:12 +0000

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 6 (1847)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 6 [Helen Burns] (1847)

Dave — Fri, 19 May 2017 22:30:25 +0000

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 6 [Helen Burns] (1847)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 6 [Jane] (1847)

Dave — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 22:09:36 +0000

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 (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 6 [Jane] (1847)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, Preface, 2nd edition (21 Dec 1847)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

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 Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, Preface, 2nd edition (21 Dec 1847)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Shirley, ch. 14 [Lina and Shirley] (1849)

Dave — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 16:47:09 +0000

“Some people say we shouldn’t give alms to the poor, Shirley.”

“They are great fools for their pains. For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity, and so on; but they forget the brevity of life, as well as its bitterness. We have none of us long to live: let us help each other through seasons of want and woe, as well as we can, without heeding in the least the scruples of vain philosophy.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Shirley, ch. 14 [Lina and Shirley] (1849)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Villette, ch. 24 “Monsieur’s Fête” (1853)

Dave — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 20:47:07 +0000

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 Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Villette, ch. 24 “Monsieur’s Fête” (1853)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Villette, ch. 36 “The Apple of Discord” (1853)

Dave — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 14:53:07 +0000

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, meet the expectation.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Villette, ch. 36 “The Apple of Discord” (1853)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Letter to a young admirer at Cambridge (as Currer Bell) (23 May 1850)

Dave — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 02:10:08 +0000

Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Letter to a young admirer at Cambridge (as Currer Bell) (23 May 1850)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Letter to G. H. Lewes (6 Nov 1847)

Dave — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 21:29:49 +0000

You advise me, too, not to stray far from the ground of experience, as I become weak when I enter the region of fiction; and you say, “real experience is perennially interesting, and to all men.” I feel that this also is true; but, dear Sir, is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Letter to G. H. Lewes (6 Nov 1847)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Letter to W S. Williams (21 Jul 1851)

Dave — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 21:04:13 +0000

The moral of it is, that if we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for THEIR sakes rather than OUR OWN; we must look at their truth to THEMSELVES, full as much as their truth to US. In the latter case, every wound to self-love would be a cause of coldness; in the former, only some painful change in the friend’s character and disposition — some frightful breach in his allegiance to his better self — could alienate the heart.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Letter to W S. Williams (21 Jul 1851)
(Source)