Anne Bronte (1820 – 1849)
British novelist and poet, the youngest sibling of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
"She is not determined to forget me. It would be wrong to forget one so deeply and fondly devoted to her, who can so thoroughly appreciate her excellencies, and sympathise with all her thoughts, as I can do, and it would be wrong in me to forget so excellent and divine a piece of God's creation as she, when I have once so truly loved and known her."
"God have mercy on his miserable soul! and make him see and feel his guilt - I ask no other vengeance! If he could but fully know and truly feel my wrongs I should be well avenged, and I could freely pardon all."
"To wheedle and coax is safer than to command."
God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and Love; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.
"There goes the dinner-bell, and here comes my aunt to scold me for sitting here at my desk all day, instead of staying with the company: wish the company were - gone."
"To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals."
That none deserve eternal bliss I know:
Unmerited the grace in mercy given,
But none shall sink to everlasting woe
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.
"I've done you a piece of good service, Nancy," he began: then seeing me, he acknowledged my presence by a slight bow. I should have been invisible to Hatfield, or any other gentleman of those parts. "I've delivered your cat," he continued, "from the hands, or rather the gun, of Mr. Murray's gamekeeper."
"I settled everything with Mrs. Grey, while you were putting on your bonnet," replied he. "She said I might have her consent, if I could obtain yours; and I asked her, in case I should be so happy, to come and live with us — for I was sure you would like it better. But she refused, saying she could now afford to employ an assistant, and would continue the school till she could purchase an annuity sufficient to maintain her in comfortable lodgings; and, meantime, she would spend her vacations alternately with us and your sister, and should be quite contented if you were happy. And so now I have overruled your objections on her account. Have you any other?"
"No — none."
"You love me then?" said he, fervently pressing my hand.
"Yes."
"How shall I teach him hereafter to respect his father, and yet to avoid his example?"
"Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first instalment of my debt. If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I'll send you the rest of my leisure: if you would rather remain my creditor than stuff your purse with such ungainly heavy pieces — tell me still, and I'll pardon your bad taste, and willingly keep the treasure to myself."
"Don't you know that every time we meet the thoughts of the final parting will become more painful? Don't you feel that every interview makes us dearer to each other than the last?"
"I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company —- why — it will be the worse for him —- that's all."
"If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether"
"Adoration isn’t love. I adore Annabella, but I don’t love her; and I love thee, Milicent, but I don’t adore thee."
Such humble talents as God had given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I fell it my duty to speak unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, through it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader's immediate pleasure as well as my own.
"Whatever my husband's faults may be, it can only aggravate the evil for me to hear them from a stranger's lips."
Revenge! No - what good would that do? - it would make him no better, and me no happier
"You will have no credit for your virtue (if you call it such): even your best friends will not believe in it; because it is monstrous, and not to be credited but by those who suffer, from the effects of it, such cruel torments that they know it to be indeed reality."
"Alas! poor Milicent, what encouragement can I give you? - or what advice - except that it is better to make a bold stand now, though at the expense of disappointing and angering both mother and brother, and lover, than to devote your whole life, hereafter, to misery and vain regret?"
"The demon of drink was as black as the demon of play, and nearly as hard to get rid of - especially as his kind friends did all they could to second the promptings of his own insatiable cravings."