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“What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self.”
― Anne bronte, Agnes Grey

“But the cinephile is â€� a neurotic! (That’s not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it’s because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, “When you love life, you go to the movies,â€� it’s false! It’s exactly the opposite: when you don’t love life, or when life doesn’t give you satisfaction, you go to the movies.”
― François Truffaut

“The wind I hear it sighing, with autumn's saddest sound; withered leaves all thick are lying, as spring-flowers on the ground. This dark night has won me to wander far away; old feelings gather fast upon me.”
― Emily Brontë, The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte Volume 1

“[Charlotte Brontë] once told her sisters that they were wrong - even morally wrong - in making their heroines beautiful as a matter of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a heroine interesting on any other terms. Her answer was, 'I will prove to you that you are wrong; I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë

“I call that creativity," Orville said. "The purpose of literature is to teach you how to THINK, not how to be practical. Learning to discover the connective tissue between seemingly unrelated events is the only way we are equipped to understand patterns in the real world.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Am I a liar in your eyes?' He asked, passionately. 'Little sceptic, you shall be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None, and that you know. What love has she for me? None, as I have taken pains to prove; I caused a rumor to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not - I could not - marry Miss Ingram. 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 Brontë, Jane Eyre

“When I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader’s immediate pleasure as well as my own.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“The first day of January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and important reflections and a question more easily asked than answered frequently occurs viz: How have I improved the past year and with [what] good intentions do I view the dawn of its successor?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Lettere

“Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let ir be their to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.

Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Père Silas; Madame Walravens fulfulled her ninetieth year before she died. Farewell.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life. 

Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Père Silas; Madame Walravens fulfilled her ninetieth year before she died. Farewell.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed, and the flame of resentment extinguished.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Genius is said to be self-conscious[,]”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.'
'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed.
[...]
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak.
'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.'
'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly.
'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.'
'In what shape?'
'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.'
'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!'
'But you will have.'
'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth.
'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.'
'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.'
'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? 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! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me 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 spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!'
'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!'
'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!'
'Where, Jane? to Ireland?'
'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.'
'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.'
'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.'
Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.
'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.'
'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.'
'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.'
[...]
'Do you doubt me, Jane?'
'Entirely.'
'You have no faith in me?'
'Not a whit.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Women read men more truly than men read women. I’ll prove that in a magazine paper some day when I have time; only it will never be inserted. It will be ‘declined with thanks,â€� and left for me at the publisher’s.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world; but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sun will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, the impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature[.] [...] Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can do sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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 Brontë, Jane Eyre

“[...] 'Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory; you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile; happiness in pleasure - I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure - such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment; you make a new acquaintance - how, or where, no matter; you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates; you feel better days come back - higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in over leaping an obstacle of custom - a mere convention impediment, which neither your conscience sanctifies not your judgment approves?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“A loving eye is all the charm needed[.]”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“We do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. a”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what is your fate to be required to bear.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“True, generous feeling is made small account by some[.] [...] Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And if you flatter yourself that I don't perceive it, you are a fool; and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words, you are an idiot; and if you fancy I'll suffer unrevenged, I'll convince you of the contrary[.]”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring. The perishing birds, however, cannot thus understand the blast before which they shiver; and as little can the suffering soul recognise, in the climax of its affliction, the dawn of its deliverance. Yet let whoever grieves still cling fast to love and faith in God: God will never deceive, never finally desert him. 'Whom He loveth, He chasteneth.' These words are true, and should not be forgotten.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley