Hey, literature lovers! Ever lost yourself in the windswept Yorkshire moors of “Wuthering Heights”, only to find you're actually cozied up on your couch? That's the spellbinding power of Emily Brontë, one of literature's fiercest storm-chasers. We're here to celebrate this genius with a deep dive into 50 passionate Emily Brontë quotes that stir our hearts as wildly as her classic novel's landscape. From love and loss to nature's raw beauty, her words breathe life into human experiences that continue to resonate over two centuries after her birth.
Did you know that Emily Brontë herself was as enigmatic and unique as her writing? Despite living a largely reclusive life in her family's parsonage, her passionate spirit was ever-present in her writing. An anecdote shared by her sister Charlotte reveals how Emily, incensed by a neighbor's dog that attacked her own, walked miles across the moor to confront the owner, encapsulating the fiery spirit we'll explore in these Emily Brontë quotes. As we venture into these profound expressions of sentiment, we'll not only marvel at their depth, but we'll also gain an intimate view of the woman behind the immortal pen. So, brace yourself, fellow bibliophiles, we're about to delve into the depths of passion with Emily Brontë!
The Depths of Emotion
1. “I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
2. “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
3. “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”
4. “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.”
5. “I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.”
6. “Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”
7. “I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you.”
8. “I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”
9. “Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”
10. “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.”
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Power of Love
- “He shall never know how I love him.”
- “I hate him for himself, but despise him for the memories he revives.”
- “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.”
- “Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”
- “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?”
- “I see heaven, and a happier life than we have known and I know it is there: I know we should reach it.”
- “I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”
- “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 altogether.”
- “I wish you to beware lest you cause me to lose the little strength I have left.”
- “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.”
On the Nature of Life
- “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.”
- “I have to remind myself to breathe — almost to remind my heart to beat!”
- “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
- “Honest people don't hide their deeds.”
- “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.”
- “I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, anymore than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”
- “Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars?”
- “I was only going to say that 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 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.”
- “It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands.”
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Brontë on Independence and Solitude
- “I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there.”
- “Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.”
- “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!”
- “You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world.”
- “Alas! We get so used to the shadows, we think they're real.”
- “I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss. The fear that she would restrains me.”
- “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?”
- “Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.”
- “No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere.”
- “If a man in a thousand years did not walk down that road and see me waiting, I would still wait for him.”
The Nature of Passion
- “My soul will find yours.”
- “They are surely gone down,” replied her son; “they'll be naught but cinders when ye get there.”
- “She burned too bright for this world.”
- “A wild, wick slip she was – but, she had the bonniest eye and sweetest smile.”
- “Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort.”
- “You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you – they'll damn you. You loved me – then what right had you to leave me?”
- “She is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?”
- “And what did I do to make him so, I, who would have given my life to have saved him from one day of the pain he had to bear.”
- “The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I'm tired, tired of being enclosed here. I'm wearyingto 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.”
- “I am surrounded by her image, and I am in that chamber where she died, and I am never to see her again when I turn my eyes from it. She fills my life.”
