Emily Bronte Quotes

The whole world awake and wild with joy. ~ Emily Bronte

If God would but give me strength to strangle him in my last agony, I'd go to hell with joy, ~ Emily Bronte

I hate him for himself, but despise him for the memories he revives. ~ Emily Bronte

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

Earnshaw 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. ~ Emily Bronte

I brought him down one evening and just set him in a chair, and never touched him afterwards. In two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and, since then, my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I fancy he sees me often, though I am not near. ~ Emily Bronte

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn,
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn.
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!'
Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
'Tis all that I implore -
In life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure. ~ Emily Bronte

We must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering. ~ Emily Bronte

Then you believe I care more for my own feelings than yours, Cathy?" he said. "No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Healthcliff, but because Mr. Healthcliff dislikes me and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity. I knew that you could not keep up an acquaintance with your cousin without being brought into contact with him; and I knew he would detest you, on my account; so for your own good, and nothing else, I took precautions that you should not see Linton again. ~ Emily Bronte

In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her! ~ Emily Bronte

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

I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind ... So don't talk of our seperation again ... ~ 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

My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I went about my house hold duties, convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and that lodged in my body. ~ Emily Bronte

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

I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. 'Come in! come in!' he sobbed. 'Cathy, do come. Oh, do - ONCE more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me THIS time, Catherine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light. ~ Emily Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

He was, and is yet, most likely, the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself, and fling the curses on his neighbours. ~ Emily Bronte

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

He turned and narrowed his eyes at her. "There is a certain sort of girl who wants the wolf to eat out of her hand. If you are such, I'll warn you, she doesn't keep her fingers long."
Emily met his gaze " Some wolves can be tamed."
"Then we call them lapdogs, my dear- and you'll put no leash on me. ~ Lena Coakley

Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy. ~ Emily Bronte

She burned too bright for this world. ~ Emily Bronte

Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldn't sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs.

Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensuality's skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sun's rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot.

Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is?

It i ~ J. Ruth Gendler

I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable kind of body ... not exactly from living among the hills, and seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from year's end to year's end: but I have undergone sharp discipline which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy. ~ Emily Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

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

Papa talks enough of my defects, and shows enough scorn of me, to make it natural I should doubt myself. I doubt whether I am not altogether as worthless as he calls me, frequently; and then I feel so cross and bitter, I hate everybody! I am worthless, and bad in temper, and bad in spirit, almost always; and, if you choose, you may say good-bye: you'll get rid of an annoyance. Only, Catherine, do me this justice: believe that if I might be as sweet, and as kind, and as good as you are, I would be; as willingly, and more so, than as happy and as healthy. And believe that your kindness has made me love you deeper than if I deserved your love: and though I couldn't, and cannot help showing my nature to you, I regret it and repent it; and shall regret and repent it till I die! ~ Emily Bronte

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! ~ Emily Bronte

You fight against that devil for love as long as you may; when the time comes, not all the angels in heaven shall save him! ~ Emily Bronte

It is a long fight, I wish it were over! ~ Emily Bronte

I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I've walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes.
I've brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking. ~ Chila Woychik

Hereafter she is only my sister in name; not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me. ~ Emily Bronte

If you strike me, Hareton will strike you! So you may as well sit down. ~ Emily Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

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

No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge- cutters. ~ Emily Bronte

The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights: he held firm possession, and proved to the attorney, who, in his turn, proved it to Mr. Linton, that Earnshaw had mortaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming; and he, Heathcliff, was the mortgagee.
In that manner, Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father's inveterate enemy; and lives in his own house as a servant deprived of the advantage of wages, and quite unable to right himself, because of his friendlessness, and his ignorance that he has been wronged. ~ Emily Bronte

In the chamber of death ... I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter-the Eternity they have entered-where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness ... One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection; but not then in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquility, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant. ~ Emily Bronte

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

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. ~ Emily Bronte

Oliver was Oliver,' I said, as if that summed things up.

'Parce que c'était lui, parce que c'était moi,' my father added, quoting Montaigne's all-encompassing explanation for his friendship with Etienne de la Boétie.

I was thinking, instead, of Emily Brontë's words: because 'he's more myself than I am. ~ Andre Aciman

Come in! come in !' he sobbed.
'Cathy, do come. Oh do -once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time - Catherine, at last! ~ Emily Bronte

Wuthering being a significant, provincial adjective descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. ~ Emily Bronte

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

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. ~ Emily Bronte

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! ~ Emily Bronte

All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?'
'Here! and here!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast, 'in whichever place the soul lives. ~ Emily Bronte

The human heart is like india-rubber; a little swells it, but a great deal will not burst it. If "little more than nothing will disturb it, little less than all things will suffice" to break it. As in the outer members of our frame, there is a vital power inherent in itself that strengthens it against external violence. Every blow that shakes it will serve to harden it against a future stroke; as constant labour thickens the skin of the hand, and strengthens its muscles instead of wasting them away: so that a day of arduous toil, that might excoriate a lady's palm, would make no sensible impression on that of a hardy ploughman. ~ Emily Bronte

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

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep Without identity. ~ Emily Bronte

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! ~ Emily Bronte

Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Bronte or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to.

[…]any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. ~ Virginia Woolf

Mr. Heathcliff, you're a cruel man, but you're not a fiend; and you won't, from mere malice, destroy, irrevocably, all my happiness. ~ Emily Bronte

Some people are very unfulfilled. In consequence they write passionately good romance because they believe that they could still find happiness. Emily Bronte was not a fulfilled woman but the passion she felt went into Wuthering Heights. ~ Charlotte Bingham

It is strange how custom can mould our tastes and ideas: many could not imagine the existence of happiness in a life of such complete exile from the world. ~ Emily Bronte

Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones. Before ~ Emily Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

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

It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. 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!"
She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, "He's considering-he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me! ~ Emily Bronte

He would have recoiled still more had he been aware that her attachment rose unsolicited, and was bestowed where it awakened no reciprocation of sentiment; for the minute he discovered its existence, he laid the blame on Heathcliff's deliberate designing. ~ Emily Bronte

It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear, even mine. ~ Emily Bronte

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

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

Honest people don't hide their deeds. ~ Emily Bronte

And you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?"
"Here! and here!" replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and another on her breast: "in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong! ~ Emily Bronte

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

Heathcliff, make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change. ~ Emily Bronte

Stop, poor sinner, stop and think Before you further go, No longer sport upon the brink Of everlasting woe." '"Exactly! ~ Emily Bronte

I believe I may assert that they were really in possession of deep and growing happiness. It ended. Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering- and it ended when circumstances caused each to feel that the one's interest was not in the chief consideration in the other's thoughts. ~ Emily Bronte

Existence, after losing her, would be hell ~ Emily 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've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I'm too happy; and yet I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself. ~ Emily Bronte

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? ~ Emily Bronte

Mrs. Heathcliff is my daughter-in-law,' said Heathcliff, corroborating my surmise. He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction: a look of hatred; ~ Emily Bronte

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

I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I could have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then - if you don't believe me, you don't know me - till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head! ~ Emily Bronte

You have left me so long to struggle against death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death! ~ Emily Bronte

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. ~ Emily Bronte

he is continually among his books, since he has no other society. ~ Emily Bronte

I have no objection whatever to your representing me as a little eccentric, since you and your learned friends would have it so; only don't set me on in my fury to burning hearthrugs, sawing the backs off chairs, and tearing my wife's silk gowns... Had I been numbered amongst the calm, concentric men of the world, I should not have been as I now am, and I should in all probability never have had such children as mine have been. ~ Patrick Bronte

Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine
If he love with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years, as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have; the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough, as her whole affection be monopolized by him
Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse
It is not in him to be loved like me, how can she love in him what he has not? ~ Emily Bronte

And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out and drank his blood! But, till then - if you don't believe me, you don't know me - til then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair on his head! ~ Emily Bronte

He is more me than I am' Catherine to Heathcliff ~ Emily Bronte

For himself, he grew desperate; his sorrow was of the king that will not lament, he neither wept nor prayed - he cursed and defied - execrated God and man, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. ~ Emily Bronte

Is Heathcliff not here?' she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors. ~ Emily Bronte

He's more myself than I am ~ Emily Bronte

Now that my kids are out of the house, I'm finally able to get to the classics I never read: Emily Bronte, Dylan Thomas, Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22.' It's endless. They're all in this gigantic pile next to my bed. ~ Robin Wright

He was always greedy; though what he grasps with one hand he flings away wit the other. ~ Emily Bronte

I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do! ~ Emily Bronte

Incomparably beyond, and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven her spirit is at home with God! ~ Emily Bronte

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

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. ~ Emily Bronte

I never told my love vocally still. ~ Emily Bronte

A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. ~ Emily Bronte

Within the sphere of English fiction Heathcliff stands alone. Therefore, if we do not understand him, then it is highly probable we were never intended to do so, so that we should try to realize and accept the fact that there may be just one or two things yet left in heaven and earth not dreamt of by our philosophy. ~ Eleanor Mcnees

I'm not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve . ~ Emily Bronte

I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. ~ Emily Bronte

I want you to be aware that I know you have treated me infernally! And, if you flatter yourself that I don't perceive it you are a fool - and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words you are an idiot - and if you fancy I'll suffer unrevenged, I'll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while! ~ Emily Bronte