Branwell Bronte Quotes

He was the one who'd come back to life not fifteen minutes ago. Whenever he got sick at home, Aunt Elizabeth and Tabitha made a tremendous fuss with hot water bottles and tinctures and sweets and kisses. It only stood to reason that they should all make an extra-tremendous fuss now. After all, when you rose from the grave in England, people tended to make whole religions out of you. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

The rage inside Charlotte crested to a peak. "I'm angry because Papa and Aunt Branwell never would have sent you here," she shouted. "Not to a charity school. Not the precious boy."
"I know that," Branwell said, his voice ragged. "I've always known that. Don't you think that might be hard to live with? ~ Lena Coakley

Backward I look upon my life,
And see one waste of storm and strife,
One wrack of sorrows, hopes, and pain,
Vanishing to arise again!
That life has moved through evening, where
Continual shadows veiled my sphere;
From youth's horizon upward rolled
To life's meridian, dark and cold. ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this. ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

In all my past life I have done nothing either great or good. ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

I sit, this evening, far away,
From all I used to know,
And nought reminds my soul to-day
Of happy long ago.

Unwelcome cares, unthought-of fears,
Around my room arise;
I seek for suns of former years
But clouds o'ercast my skies.

Yes - Memory, wherefore does thy voice
Bring old times back to view,
As thou wouldst bid me not rejoice
In thoughts and prospects new?

I'll thank thee, Memory, in the hour
When troubled thoughts are mine -
For thou, like suns in April's shower,
On shadowy scenes wilt shine.

I'll thank thee when approaching death
Would quench life's feeble ember,
For thou wouldst even renew my breath
With thy sweet word 'Remember'! ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

I know only that it is time for me to be something when I am nothing. ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

Life is a downward journey; all concur in saying it carries us downhill. ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current - as ~ Charlotte Bronte

Banal sexism aside,
I find myself tempted

to read Wuthering Heights as one thick stacked act of revenge
for all that life withheld from Emily.
But the poetry shows traces of a deeper explanation.

As if anger could be a kind of vocation for some women.
It is a chilly thought. ~ Anne Carson

How she does stare! It's odd what a savage feeling I have to anything that seems afraid of me. ~ Emily Bronte

And cried for mamma, at every turn'-I added, 'and trembled if a country lad heaved his fist against you, and sat at home all day for a shower of rain.-Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass, and I'll let you see what you should wish. Do you mark those two lines between your eyes, and those thick brows, that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle, and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies? 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-Don't get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet, hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers.'
'In other words, I must wish for Edgar Linton's great blue eyes, and even forehead,' he replied. 'I do - and that won't help me to them.'
'A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,' I continued, 'if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing, and combing, and sulking - tell me whether you don't think yourself rather handsome? I'll tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them ~ Emily Bronte

And came back through heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor
thank Heaven!
always Storm. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Do you think me, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? ~ Charlotte Bronte

Presentiments are strange things: and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity had not yet found the key. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. ~ Charlotte Bronte

His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows. ~ Charlotte Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I like my blood warm. I find cold blood as appetizing as an old stale cup of coffee. It's hard to choke down, but then again I'm finicky. ~ Gea Haff

I trust you have a plan?"
Ky stifled a chuckle. 'Course he didn't have a plan. In instances like these, having too much of a plan was almost certain to get you killed. Better to trust instinct and not box yourself in with expectations. ~ Gillian Bronte Adams

In catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.'
'That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us. ~ Anne Bronte

Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb. ~ Anne Bronte

[ ... ] I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Ever since I was young, I've read Austen and the Brontes. My friends laugh, but those books are always so tragic and wonderful - those stories, they're just incredible. ~ Jessica Brown Findlay

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. ~ Emily Bronte

You're the shape-changer aren't you?" he said. "Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say."
Tessa swallowed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. "No. No mark."
He grinned around his fork. "I do suppose they've looked everywhere?"
"I'm sure Will's tryed," said Jessamine in a bored tone. Tessa's silverware clattered to the plate. Jessamine, who had been mashing her peas to the side of the plate with her knife, looked out when Charlotte let out an aghast, "Jessamine! ~ Cassandra Clare

[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine. ~ Charlotte Bronte

A hardness such as this is taught by rough experience and despair alone ~ Anne Bronte

If I've done wrong, I'm dying for it. It is enough! You left me too; but I won't upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me! ~ Emily Bronte

You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength. ~ Charlotte Bronte

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me. ~ Charlotte Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. ~ Charlotte Bronte

How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried. ~ Charlotte Bronte