Anne Brontë Quotes

How odd it is that we so often weep for each other’s distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!

I ask not how remote the day Nor what the sinner's woe Before their dross is purged away, Enough for me to know That when the cup of wrath is drained, The metal purified, They'll cling to what they once disdained, And live by Him that died.

Say does your heart expand to all mankind And would you ever to your neighbour do, — The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind — As you would have your neighbour do to you? And, when you, looking on your fellow men Behold them doomed to endless misery, How can you talk of joy and rapture then? May God withhold such cruel joy from me!

Adoration isn’t love. I adore Annabella, but I don’t love her; and I love thee, Milicent, but I don’t adore thee.

I cannot love a man who cannot protect me.

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

It is deeds not words which must purchase my affection and esteem.

On all her breezes borne Earth yields no scents like those; But he, that dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose.

That none deserve eternal bliss I know: Unmerited the grace in mercy given, But none shall sink to everlasting woe That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.

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.

As an animal, Matilda was all right, full of life, vigour, and activity; as an intelligent being, she was barbarously ignorant, indocile, careless, and irrational; and consequently, very distressing to one who had the task of cultivating her understanding, reforming her manners, and aiding her to acquire those ornamental attainments which, unlike her sister, she despised as much as the rest...

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.

You will form a very inadequate estimate of a man's character, if you judge by what a fond sister says of him. The worst of them generally know how to hide their misdeeds from their sisters' eyes, and their mother's, too.

A burst of passion is a fine rousing thing upon occasion, Helen, and a flood of tears is marvellously affecting, but, when indulged too often, they are both deuced plaguy things for spoiling one's beauty and tiring out one's friends.

Why," said I — "why should you suppose that I dislike the place?" "You told me so yourself," was the decisive reply. "You said, at least, that you could not live contentedly, without a friend; and that you had no friend here, and no possibility of making one — and, besides, I know you must dislike it.