Charlotte Brontë quotes

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, best known for writing "Jane Eyre." Her works explored themes of social criticism, gender roles, and personal resilience. She remains an influential figure in classic English literature. Here are 176 of her quotes:

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. (Charlotte Brontë)
Better to be without logic than without feeling. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
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. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
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. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
God did not give me my life to throw it away. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it. (Charlotte Brontë)
I feel monotony and death to be almost the same. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
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. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Reader, I married him. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
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. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller significance what I have always said in theory - Wait God's will. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. 'I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star. (Charlotte Brontë)
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 firm there, firm as weeds among stones. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
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. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Give him enough rope and he will hang himself. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Look twice before you leap. View quote
Charlotte Brontë