Anne Brontë

[B]eauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world.

And you thought to rob me of my son too, and bring him up to be a dirty Yankee tradesman, or a low, beggarly painter?" "Yes, to obviate his becoming such a gentleman as his father.

Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

Since I love him so much, I can easily forgive him for loving himself.

Oh, Richard!" exclaimed she, on one occasion, "if you would but dismiss such gloomy subjects from your mind, you would live as long as any of us; at least you would live to see the girls married, and yourself a happy grandfather, with a canty old dame for your companion.

"What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self.

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.

There is such a thing as looking through a person's eyes into the heart, and learning more of the height, and breadth, and depth of another's soul in one hour than it might take you a lifetime to discover, if he or she were not disposed to reveal it, or if you had not the sense to understand it.

I think your piety one of your greatest charms; but then, like all other good things, it may be carried too far. To my thinking, a woman's religion ought not to lessen her devotion to her earthly lord. She should have enough to purify and etherealise her soul, but not enough to refine away her heart, and raise her above all human sympathies.

All for myself the sigh would swell, The tear of anguish start; I little knew what wilder woe Had filled the Poet's heart. I did not know the nights of gloom, The days of misery; The long, long years of dark despair, That crushed and tortured thee.

A light wind swept over the corn; and all nature laughed in the sunshine.

I have no horror of death: if I thought it inevitable I think I could quietly resign myself to the prospect ... But I wish it would please God to spare me not only for Papa's and Charlotte's sakes, but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practice – humble and limited indeed – but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose. But God's will be done.

I imagine there must be only a very, very few men in the world, that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one he may not happen to be single, or to take a fancy to me.

And, O! there lives within my heart A hope long nursed by me, (And should its cheering ray depart How dark my soul would be) That as in Adam all have died In Christ shall all men live And ever round his throne abide Eternal praise to give; That even the wicked shall at last Be fitted for the skies And when their dreadful doom is past To life and light arise.