Anne Brontë Quotes

I’ll tell you a piece of news--I hope you have not heard it before: for good, bad, or indifferent, one always likes to be the first to tell.
Anne Brontë
I was sorry for her; I was amazed, disgusted at her heartless vanity; I wondered why so much beauty should be given to those who made so bad a use of it, and denied to some who would make it a benefit to both themselves and others.But, God knows best, I concluded. There are, I suppose, some men as vain, as selfish, and as heartless as she is, and, perhaps, such women may be useful to punish them.
Anne Brontë
All our talents increase in the using and every faculty both good and bad strengthens by exercise.
Anne Brontë
Every action we take everything we do is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.
Anne Brontë
It is better to arm and strengthen your hero than to disarm and enfeeble your foe.
Anne Brontë
By his [God's] help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty. If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavor to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be hereafter.
Anne Brontë
A spirit of candor and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness, headmired in others, but he could not acquire it himself.
Anne Brontë
Therefore, have done with this nonsense: you have no ground for hope: dismiss, at once, these hurtful thoughts and foolish wishes from your mind, and turn to your own duty, and the dull blank life that lies before you. You might have known such happiness was not for you.
Anne Brontë
I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other.
Anne Brontë
She spoke of these with animation, and heard my admiring comments with a smile of pleasure: that soon, however, vanished, and was followed by a melancholy sigh; as if in consideration of the insufficiency of all such baubles to the happiness of the human heart, and their woeful inability to supply its insatiate demands.
Anne Brontë
I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea-drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup.
Anne Brontë
I gave up hoping...But, still, I would think of him, I would cherish his image in my mind, and treasure every word, look and gesture that memory could retain.
Anne Brontë
Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?''Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.
Anne Brontë
You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again.
Anne Brontë
Adieu! but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart. And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
Anne Brontë
I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company - why - it will be the worse for him - that's all.''If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether.
Anne Brontë
Though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result
Anne Brontë
There is another life both for you and for me,’ said I. ‘If it be the will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I, too, have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment, or yours either, with my consent; and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion, and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness—happiness sure to end in misery even here—for myself or any other!
Anne Brontë
After breakfast, determined to pass as little of the day as possible in company with Lady Lowborough, I quietly stole away from the company and retired to the library. Mr. Hargrave followed me thither, under pretence of coming for a book; and first, turning to the shelves, he selected a volume, and then quietly, but by no means timidly, approaching me, he stood beside me, resting his hand on the back of my chair, and said softly, ‘And so you consider yourself free at last?’‘Yes,’ said I, without moving, or raising my eyes from my book, ‘free to do anything but offend God and my conscience.
Anne Brontë
Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.''But should you wish yourself to be like him?''No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.
Anne Brontë
I don’t know how to talk to you, Mrs. Huntingdon . . . you are only half a woman--your nature must be half human, half angelic. Such goodness overawes me; I don’t know what to make of it.
Anne Brontë
And so you prefer her faults to other people’s perfections?
Anne Brontë
. . . I should wish you to think more deeply, to look further, and aim higher than you do.
Anne Brontë
If you would really study my pleasure, mother, you must consider your own comfort and convenience a little more than you do.
Anne Brontë
If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.
Anne Brontë
God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and LOVE; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.
Anne Brontë
I returned, however, with unabated vigour to my work—a more arduous task than anyone can imagine, who has not felt something like the misery of being charged with the care and direction of a set of mischievous, turbulent rebels, whom his utmost exertions cannot bind to their duty; while, at the same time, he is responsible for their conduct to a higher power, who exacts from him what cannot be achieved without the aid of the superior’s more potent authority; which, either from indolence, or the fear of becoming unpopular with the said rebellious gang, the latter refuses to give. I can conceive few situations more harassing than that wherein, however you may long for success, however you may labour to fulfil your duty, your efforts are baffled and set at nought by those beneath you, and unjustly censured and misjudged by those above.
Anne Brontë
One glance he gave, one little smile at parting—it was but for a moment; but therein I read, or thought I read, a meaning that kindled in my heart a brighter flame of hope than had ever yet arisen.
Anne Brontë
God might awaken that heart, supine and stupefied with self-indulgence, and remove the film of sensual darkness from his eyes, but I could not.
Anne Brontë
The ties that bind us to life are tougher than you imagine, or than any one can who has not felt how roughly they may be pulled without breaking.
Anne Brontë
No one can be happy in eternal solitude.
Anne Brontë
Though solitude, endured too long,Bids youthful joys too soon decay,Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue,And overclouds my noon of day;When kindly thoughts that would have way,Flow back discouraged to my breast;I know there is, though far away,A home where heart and soul may rest.Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine,The warmer heart will not belie;While mirth, and truth, and friendship shineIn smiling lip and earnest eye.The ice that gathers round my heartMay there be thawed; and sweetly, then,The joys of youth, that now depart,Will come to cheer my soul again.
Anne Brontë
. . . because we cannot conceive that as we grow up our own minds will become so enlarged and elevated that we ourselves shall then regard as trifling those objects and pursuits we now so fondly cherish, and that, though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will drink with us at other fountains of delight, and mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain essentially the same individuals as before.
Anne Brontë
Never! while heaven spares my reason,’ replied I, snatching away the hand he had presumed to seize and press between his own.
Anne Brontë
She, however, attentively watched my looks, and her artist's pride was gratified, no doubt, to read my heartfelt admiration in my eyes.
Anne Brontë
. . . you have blighted the promise of youth, and made my life a wilderness!
Anne Brontë
To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it; but would not all such sorrow be misplaced?
Anne Brontë
There is perfect love in Heaven!
Anne Brontë
I was infatuated once with a foolish, besotted affection, that clung to him in spite of his unworthiness, but it is fairly gone now--wholly crushed and withered away; and he has none but himself and his vices to thank for it.
Anne Brontë
If we can only speak to slander our betters, let us hold our tongues.
Anne Brontë
He cannot endure Rachel, because he knows she has a proper appreciation of him.
Anne Brontë
I’ll promise to think twice before I take any important step you seriously disapprove of.
Anne Brontë
She left me, offended at my want of sympathy, and thinking, no doubt, that I envied her. I did not - at least, I firmly believed I did not.
Anne Brontë
Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.
Anne Brontë
When a lady condescends to apologise, there is no keeping one’s anger.
Anne Brontë
How odd it is that we so often weep for each other’s distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!
Anne Brontë
Oh, Youth may listen patiently,While sad Experience tells her tale,But Doubt sits smiling in his eye,For ardent Hope will still prevail!He hears how feeble Pleasure dies,By guilt destroyed, and pain and woe;He turns to Hope—and she replies,“Believe it not-it is not so!
Anne Brontë
I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.''That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us.
Anne Brontë
I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent’s authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue.
Anne Brontë
When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone - there are many, many other things to be considered.
Anne Brontë
It’s well to have such a comfortable assurance regarding the worth of those we love. I only wish you may not find your confidence misplaced.
Anne Brontë
I still preserve those relics of past sufferings and experience, like pillars of witness set up in travelling through the valve of life, to mark particular occurrences. The footsteps are obliterated now; the face of the country may be changed; but the pillar is still there, to remind me how all things were when it was reared.
Anne Brontë
But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were: hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning, and find himself in Port Nelson, in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him.
Anne Brontë
It is natural for our unamiable sex to dislike the creatures, for you ladies lavish so many caresses upon them.
Anne Brontë
A few cold words on yonder stone, A corpse as cold as they can be -­ Vain words, and mouldering dust, alone -­ Can this be all that's left of thee? O, no! thy spirit lingers still Where'er thy sunny smile was seen: There's less of darkness, less of chill On earth, than if thou hadst not been.Thou breathest in my bosom yet, And dwellest in my beating heart; And, while I cannot quite forget, Thou, darling, canst not quite depart.
Anne Brontë
Severed and gone, so many years! And art thou still so dear to me, That throbbing heart and burning tears Can witness how I cling to thee?
Anne Brontë
Though riches had charms, poverty had no terrors for an inexperiencedgirl like me. Indeed, to say the truth, there was something exhilaratingin the idea of being driven to straits, and thrown upon our own resources.I only wished papa, mamma, and Mary were all of the samemind as myself; and then, instead of lamenting past calamities we mightall cheerfully set to work to remedy them; and the greater the difficulties,the harder our present privations, the greater should be our cheerfulness to endure the latter, and our vigour to contend against the former.
Anne Brontë
My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry—and often find it, too—whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart.
Anne Brontë
Two years hence you will be as calm as I am now, - and far, far happier, I trust, for you are a man and free to act as you please
Anne Brontë
I may be permitted, like the doctors, to cure a greater evil by a less, for I shall not fall seriously in love with the young widow, I think, nor she with me - that's certain - but if I find a little pleasure in her society I may surely be allowed to seek it; and if the star of her divinity be bright enough to dim the lustre of Eliza's, so much the better, but I scarcely can think it
Anne Brontë