I would always rather be happy than dignified.
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Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/, commonly /ˈbrɒnteɪ/; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works (including her best known novel, Jane Eyre) under the pen name Currer Bell. 2Early life and education Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, west of Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1816, the third of the six children of Maria (née Branwell) and Patrick Brontë (formerly surnamed Brunty or Prunty), an Irish Anglican clergyman. In 1820 her family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth, where her father had been appointed perpetual curate of St Michael and All Angels Church. Maria died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and a son, Branwell, to be taken care of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell. In August 1824 Patrick sent Charlotte, Emily, Maria and Elizabeth to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Charlotte maintained that the school's poor conditions permanently affected her health and physical development, and hastened the deaths of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who both died of tuberculosis in June 1825. After the deaths of his older daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school. Charlotte used the school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre. At home in Haworth Parsonage, Brontë acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters
Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
This girl who stands so quiet and grave at the mouth of hell. This girl who is all quietness and sanity and innocence. You wondered why I wanted her?
I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express.
Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this…
I would always rather be happy than dignified.
I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
I would always rather be happy than dignified.
I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
He made me love him without looking at me.
Strange energy was in his voice; strange fire in his look.
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.
...human beings must love something...
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.
Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.