Charlotte Bronte

"I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me."

"I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward."

"Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm."

"The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely."

"I knew you would do me good in some way, at some time--I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you."

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs."

"If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own."

"Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste."

"To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment."

"I write because I cannot NOT write."

"Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves."

"The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed."

"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. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent."