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"Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture - still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish."
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Exlpore more Observation quotes
"People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it."
"It's strange to see people you don't know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks."
"I give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove. It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn't squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn't even blink."
"The whole of the world could be deduced from the smallest grain of sand, if one studied it closely enough."
"Most people spend less time outside than prisoners."
"The Republic's most wanted criminal is just a boy, sitting before me, suddenly vulnerable, laying all his weaknesses out for me to see."
"I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes necessary too."
"Snap your fingerstop the world - rain falls harder."
"His eyes said what I cannot see."
"New Englanders could be so brusque."
Explore more quotes by Charlotte Bronte
"I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs."
"Existence was never originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me among the rest."
"Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my supper takes care of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless; nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom of heaven."
"Observe her when she has some knitting, or some other woman's work in hand, and sits the image of peace, calmly intent on her needles and her silk, some discussion meantime going on around her, in the course of which peculiarities of character are being developed, or important interests canvassed; she takes no part in int; her humble, feminine mind is wholl with her knitting; none of her features move; she neither presumes to smile approval, nor frown disapprobation; her little hands assiduously ply their unpretending task; if she can only get this purse finished, or this bonnet-grec completed, it is enough for her."
"Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day! exclaimed she, rattling away at the instrument. "Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a step beyond papa's park gates: nor to go even so far without mama's permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman-her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentlemen, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be:-Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man."
"I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,' said Diana, 'during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you - he will make it up.'I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him - he stood at the foot of the stairs."
"Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to drawso near to him? I asked myself. "Surely she cannot truly like him, or notlike him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles solavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate,graces so multitudinous."
"A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forward- that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time open- predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them so far, that at last I became sufficiently tranquil to be able to say my prayers and seek my couch. I had just extinguished my candle and lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: "I lie in the shadow of St. Paul's."
"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine."
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