Top 200 Charlotte Brontë Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”

— Charlotte Brontë

2. “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

— Charlotte Brontë

3. “Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”

— Charlotte Brontë

4. “What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

5. “The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Loneliness Quotes, Lonely Quotes

6. “The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Silence Quotes, Broken Heart Quotes

7. “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.”

— Charlotte Brontë

8. “You are human and fallible.”

— Charlotte Brontë

9. “But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!”

— Charlotte Brontë

10. “Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”

— Charlotte Brontë

11. “I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it’s expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it’s perils.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Real Quotes

12. “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

— Charlotte Brontë

13. “Oft a little morning rain Foretells a pleasant day.”

— Charlotte Brontë

14. “I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Moving Forward Quotes

15. “The shadows are as important as the light.”

— Charlotte Brontë

16. “Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.”

— Charlotte Brontë

17. “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.”

— Charlotte Brontë

18. “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.”

— Charlotte Brontë

19. “Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.”

— Charlotte Brontë

20. “God did not give me my life to throw it away.”

— Charlotte Brontë

21. “Your will shall decide your destiny.”

— Charlotte Brontë

22. “I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.”

— Charlotte Brontë

23. “Look twice before you leap.”

— Charlotte Brontë

24. “Rapidly, merrily, Life’s sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly!”

— Charlotte Brontë

25. “Remorse is the poison of life.”

— Charlotte Brontë

26. “Who has words at the right moment?”

— Charlotte Brontë

27. “Take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

28. “Better to be without logic than without feeling.”

— Charlotte Brontë

29. “I have for the first time found what I can truly love- I have found you. You are my sympathy-my better self-my good angel-I am bound to you with a strong attachment.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Featured in: Strong Quotes

30. “You mocking changeling- fairy-born and human-bred!”

— Charlotte Brontë

31. “A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”

— Charlotte Brontë

32. “I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”

— Charlotte Brontë

33. “Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”

— Charlotte Brontë

34. “Let your performance do the thinking.”

— Charlotte Brontë

35. “What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?”

— Charlotte Brontë

36. “Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”

— Charlotte Brontë

37. “I am no bird and no net ensnares me.”

— Charlotte Brontë

38. “Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.”

— Charlotte Brontë

39. “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter – in the eye.”

— Charlotte Brontë

40. “The idea of seeing the sea – of being near it – watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday – in calm, perhaps in storm – fills and satisfies my mind.”

— Charlotte Brontë

41. “All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”

— Charlotte Brontë

42. “Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”

— Charlotte Brontë

43. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”

— Charlotte Brontë

44. “He is not to them what he is to me.”

— Charlotte Brontë

45. “I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”

— Charlotte Brontë

46. “But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?”

— Charlotte Brontë

47. “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”

— Charlotte Brontë

48. “Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.”

— Charlotte Brontë

49. “I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”

— Charlotte Brontë

50. “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. With this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.”

— Charlotte Brontë