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.
~
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied---Sleep never came!
~
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The cool peace and dewy sweetness of the night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point, but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.
~
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy.
~
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.
~
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
It will be conjectured that I was of course glad to return to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable conjecture does no harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted.
~
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within as on the state of things without and around us.
~
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.
~
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."
~
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
~
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte