Quotes from Anne Bronte

If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavour to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be hereafter.

I would rather admire you from this distance, fair lady, than be the partner of your home.

Revenge! No—what good would that do?—it would make him no better, and me no happier.' 'I

You'll find a man can live without his money as merrily as a tortoise without its head, or a wasp without its body." '"But

without fostering vain regrets and hurtful aspirations, and feeding thoughts that should be sternly and pitilessly left to perish of inanition.

he dislikes me to have any pleasure but in himself, any shadow of homage or kindness but such as he chooses to vouchsafe: he knows he is my sun, but when he chooses to withhold his light, he would have my sky to be all darkness; he cannot bear that I should have a moon to mitigate the deprivation.

animadversions

Reading is my favorite occupation. When I have leisure for it and books to read.

I should think you will be willing enough to go?' 'Yes — for some things,' I replied. 'For some things only — I wonder what should make you regret it?' I was annoyed at this in some degree; because it embarrassed me: I had only one reason for regretting it; and that was a profound secret, which he had no business to trouble me about.

You have blighted the freshness and promise of youth, and made my life a wilderness!

I am determined not to consent until I know for certain whether my aunt's opinion of him or mine is nearest the truth; for if mine is altogether wrong, it is not he that I love; it is a creature of my own imagination.

Es tonto desear la belleza. Las personas sensatas nunca la desean para sí ni le dan importancia en los demás. Si la mente está bien cultivada y el corazón bien dispuesto, a nadie le importa el exterior. Eso decían los profesores de nuestra infancia, y eso decimos nosotros a los niños de hoy. Todo muy juicioso y correcto, sin duda, pero ¿la experiencia apoya tales afirmaciones?

What is God?—I cannot see Him or hear Him.—God is only an idea." '"God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness—and Love;

And why should I take it for granted that my son will be one in a thousand? – and not rather prepare for the worst, and suppose he will be like his – like the rest of mankind, unless I take care to prevent it?

Its easily done, replied he, with a faint smile, bordering on a sneer: to abuse your friend and knock him on the head, without any assignable cause, and then tell him the deed was not quite correct, but it's no matter whether he pardons it or not.

This considerably softened my resentment, though it did not make me relent. I was determined to show him that my heart was not his slave, and I could live without him if I chose.

Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.

She had, or might have had, many suitors in her own rank of life, but scornfully repulsed or rejected them all; for none but a gentleman could please her refined taste, and none but a rich one could satisfy her soaring ambition.

In Wildfell Hall, moral disease has become a norm.

Anne Brontë brings into full focus the expropriated, estranged nature of women's lives. Helen can call neither her home nor her name her own. Wildfell Hall is a feminist manifesto of revolutionary power and intelligence.

it examines the abuse of language in the small talk of women, the big talk of men, in prattle, insult, gossip, curses and the bearing of false witness both through lies and self-delusion.

But he has promised to write often, and made me promise to write still oftener, because he will be busy settling his affairs, and I shall have nothing better to do.

Forgetfulness is not to be purchased with a wish; and I cannot bestow my esteem on all who desire it, unless they deserve it too.

But why not?  What objection do you find?' 'Firstly, he is at least forty years old—considerably more, I should think—and I am but eighteen; secondly, he is narrow-minded and bigoted in the extreme; thirdly, his tastes and feelings are wholly dissimilar to mine; fourthly, his looks, voice, and manner are particularly displeasing to me; and, finally, I have an aversion to his whole person that I never can surmount.