Quotes by Emily Bronte

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.

If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.

Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous.

A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

Cold in the earth and fifteen wild Decembers, From those brown hills, have melted into spring.

Terror made me cruel.

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne'er returned again!

Let grief distract the sufferer's breast,
And night obscure his way;
They hasten him to endless rest,
And everlasting day.

The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always -- take any form -- drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

Look on the grave where thou must sleep

Thy last, and strongest foe;

It is endurance not to weep,

If that repose seem woe.

We do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others.

You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled!

However miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery.

Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony--
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

Instead of finding her outside, I heard her voice within. The little monkey had crept by the skylight of one garret, along the roof, into the skylight of the other, and it was with the utmost difficulty I could coax her out again.
When she did come, Heathcliff came with her;.

I love him better than myself, Ellen; and I know it by this: I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be: that proves I love him better than myself.

I have not broken your heart-you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I'm too happy; and yet I'm not happy enough. My souls bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself.

Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in its shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life that I hardly remember to eat and drink.

It's no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,' she muttered.

No coward soul is mine.

And from the midst of cheerless gloom I passed to bright unclouded day.

I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.

Oh, I'm burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed?

I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep and throw the church down over me; but I won't rest till you are with me… I never will!

It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world.

He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction, a look of hatred unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul.

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.

If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.

Pessoas orgulhosas criam grandes tristezas para si mesmas.

Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.

The wind I hear it sighing, with autumn's saddest sound; withered leaves all thick are lying, as spring-flowers on the ground. This dark night has won me to wander far away; old feelings gather fast upon me.

Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me!

I'd be glad of a retaliation that wouldn't recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends: they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies.

You forget you have a master here,'' says the tyrant. ''I'll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances, darling, pull his hair as you go by; I heard him snap his fingers.''
'Frances pulled his hair heartily;.

Worthless as wither'd weeds.

It's wrong to anticipate evil.

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.

The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending,
' ''What, done already?''
'On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners!

But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw).

It was a marvelous effort of perspicacity to discover that I did not love her.

Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it? was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.

I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether undervalued and uncoveted by me.'' Heathcliff.

You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties, for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.

Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever; your veins are full of ice water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.

He... was attached by ties stronger than reason could break -- chains, forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen.

You must forgive me, for I struggled only for you.

I might as well have struggled with a bear or reasoned with a lunatic.

Good words, I replied. But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.

Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper!

Juega con la flor perfumada,
La rama tierna del joven árbol,
Y deja mis sentimientos humanos
En su propio cauce inquieto.

Trouble me no more about her. Hereafter she is only my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me.

He might as well plant an oak in a flowerpot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!

The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me, And I cannot, cannot go.

You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into...it is as much as you can expect from a poor man's daughter.

The Lord help us!' he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.

You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!

By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

And firstly, let me beware of the fascination that lurks in Catherine Heathcliff's brilliant eyes. I should be in a curious taking if I surrendered my heart to that young person, and the daughter turned out a second edition of the mother.

Invariably to me, I know, and to any person who saw her, I should think -- refuted more tangible proofs of convalescence, and stamped her as one doomed to decay.

The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him.

I have not broken your heart -- you have broken it -- and in breaking it, you have broken mine ... I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer -- but yours! How can I?

I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer -- but yours! How can I?

One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them.

No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that, I don't feel pain.

That brute of a lad has warmed me nicely. Next time, Master Edgar, take the law into your own fists it will give you an appetite!

Yes you had the reason of going to bed with a proud heart and an empty stomach,' said I. 'Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.

Are you possessed with a devil,' he pursued, savagely, 'to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me?

That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul.

I love my murderer -- but yours? How can I?

It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.

I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again--it is hers yet--he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it.

Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart -- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong.

That is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul.

If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I'd be your slave.

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.

I have no pity! I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain.

May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you -- haunt me, then.

The entire world is a collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her.

I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... Why am I so changed? I'm sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.

I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it.

He'll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to loved or hated again.

I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be -- that proves I love him better than myself.

How cruel, your veins are full of ice-water and mine are boiling.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again?

He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares?

I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again -- it is hers yet -- he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it.

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will changeit,I'mwellaware, aswinterchangesthetrees. My Love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneatha source of little visible delight but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff.

I understand that most ladies tend to prefer lap dogs.... Perhaps I am an exception.

Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee.

Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

Take any form, haunt me, drive me crazy but never leave me in this abyss where I can not find you.

What kind of living will it be when you -- Oh, God! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?

You're hard to please: so many friends and so few cares, and can't make yourself content.

How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.

Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear

Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;

A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,

And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets them.

A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,

So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;

And, deepening still the dreamlike charm,

Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, with courage to endure.

It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer--but yours! How can I?

I cannot love thee; thou 'rt worse than thy brother. Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after.

I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.

Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes.

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,

While the world's tide is bearing me along;

Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me,

Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong.

They forgot everything the minute they were together again.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:

It vexes me to choose another guide:

Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;

Where the wild wind blows on the mountain-side.

Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous.

Earnsha was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point -- one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed -- they contrived in the end to reach it.

You know, I've had a bitter, hard life since I last heard your voice and if I've survived it's all because of you.

I have fled my country and gone to the heather.

For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it.

The clock strikes off the hollow half-hours of all the life that is left to you, one by one.

Hush, my darling! Hush, hush, Catherine! I'll stay. If he shot me so, I'd expire with a blessing on my lips.

Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss's neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?

I wish I could hold you, she continued bitterly, till we were both dead!

To sneer at his imperfect attempt was very bad breeding.

I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by that splendid moon.

He possessed the power to depart, as much as a cat possesses the power to leave a mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten.

I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!

So, with a ready heart I swore
To seek their altar-stone no more;
And gave my spirit to adore
Thee, ever-present, phantom thing
My slave, my comrade, my king.

Don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.

Being repulsed continually hardened her,.

Joseph is the wearisomest and self-righteous Pharisee who ever ransacked the Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses on his neighbor.

Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.

Wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

Cathy, this lamb of yours threatens like a bull!' he said. 'It is in danger of splitting its skull against my knuckles. By God! Mr. Linton, I'm mortally sorry that you are not worth knocking down!

It is strange people should be so greedy when they are alone in the world!

Thoughts are tyrants that return again and again to torment us.

He shall never know how I love him.

I'd soon put that little canary into the park on a winter's day as recommend you to bestow your heart on him!

and the more hurt she gets, the more venomous she grows.

I'm happiest when most away I can bear my soul from its home of clay On a windy night when the moon is bright And the eye can wander through worlds of light-- When I am not and none beside-- Nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky-- But only spirit wandering wide Through infinite immensity.

Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

Cold inthe earthand the deepsnow piled abovethee, Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last byTime's all-serving wave?

The old church tower and garden wall Are black with autumn rain And dreary winds foreboding call The darkness down again.

Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf.

They DO live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year's standing.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

He had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner: and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, 'Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!

I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow.

Nelly, I am Heathcliff -- he's always, always in my mind -- not as a pleasure, any more then I am always a pleasure to myself -- but, as my own being.

A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.

As different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

He's not a rough diamond -- a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.

And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright unclouded day.

Mr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar stairs with vexatious phlegm.

If I were you, I'd go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog.

I wish i were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... (catherine, ch. XII, p. 125).

He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.

I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

I'm now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

She was a wild, wicked slip of a girl. She burned too brightly for this world.

If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.

There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou -- Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

I have not broken your heart -- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.

Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it -- but take care not to smile at any part of it.

I am now quite content in my seeking pleasure in society be it country or town, a sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

And I pray one prayer -- I repeat it till my tongue stiffens -- Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you -- haunt me, then!...Be with me always -- take any form -- drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.

Be with me always -- take any form -- drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mate less play; And, while the night is gathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away.

But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.

It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.

He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.

Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.

A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.

Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you.

Honest people don't hide their deeds.

I see heaven's glories shine and faith shines equal.

A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.