109 quotes
Friends as we are, we would willingly keep your failings to ourselves — even from ourselves if we could, unless by knowing them we could deliver you from them.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
I am truly miserable — more so than I like to acknowledge to myself. Pride refuses to aid me. It has brought me into the scrape, and will not help me out of it.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Though I hate him from my heart, and should rejoice at any calamity that could befall him, I'll leave him to God; and though I abhor my own life, I'll leave that, too, to Him that gave it.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
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 fullness of the Godhead shines.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
The greater the happiness that nature sets before me, the more I lament that he is not here to taste it: the greater the bliss we might enjoy together, the more I feel our present wretchedness apart.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
What the world stigmatizes as romantic, is often more nearly allied to the truth than is commonly supposed; for, if the generous ideas of youth are too often over-clouded by the sordid views of after-life, that scarcely proves them to be false.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthens by exercise: therefore, if you choose to use the bad, or those which tend to evil, till they become your masters, and neglect the good till they dwindle away, you have only yourself to blame.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmèd sight,
What may not bless my waking eyes.
I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
I ever give a thought to another, you may well spare it, for those fancies are here and gone like a flash of lightning, while my love for you burns on steadily, and for ever, like the sun.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
"Are you hero enough to unite yourself to one whom you know to be suspected and despised by all around you, and identify your interests and your honour with hers? Think! it is a serious thing."
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can’t complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
My God! O let me call Thee mine!
Weak, wretched sinner though I be,
My trembling soul would fain be Thine,
My feeble faith still clings to Thee.
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
He knows he is my sun, but when he chooses to withhold his light, he would have my sky to be all darkness; he cannot bear that I should have a moon to mitigate the deprivation.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
If you would have your son to walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them — not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
When a lady does consent to listen to an argument against her own opinions, she is always predetermined to withstand it — to listen only with her bodily ears, keeping the mental organs resolutely closed against the strongest reasoning.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
In love affairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child — ever ready to cement divided hearts, to span the unfriendly gulf of custom, to melt the ice of cold reserve, and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
I imagine, there must be only a very, very few men in the world that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one he may not happen to be single, or to take a fancy to me.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)