Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Jane Eyre, ch. 12 (1847).)

One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Jane Eyre, ch. 33 (1847).)

Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-55), British novelist. Jane Eyre, ch. 21 (1847). "Deglutition" means the action of swallowing [OED]...)

Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Mr. Brocklehurst, in Jane Eyre, ch. 4 (1847). Said to Mrs. Reed.)

Look twice before you leap.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Shirley, ch. 9 (1849).)

Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Mr. Rochester, in Jane Eyre, ch. 19 (1847). Disguised as a fortune teller reading the character of Jane Eyre.)

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 Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Eliza Reed to her sister Georgiana, in Jane Eyre, ch. 21 (1847).)

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master?something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.... If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Emily Bront?, Wuthering Heights, preface (1850).)

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after- flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Jane Eyre, ch. 4 (1847).)

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

(Charlotte Bront? (1816-1855), British novelist. Jane Eyre, ch. 29 (1847).)