Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel, Villette explores the inner life of a lonely young Englishwoman, Lucy Snowe, who leaves an unhappy existence in England to become a teacher in the capital of a fictional European country. Drawn to the school's headmaster, Lucy must face the pain of unrequited love and the question of her place in society.For Villette, Brontë drew upon her own experiences ten years earlier, when she studied in Brussels and developed an unreciprocated passion for her married teacher

Villette Annotated

llikaditoo 

Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none.

Her attitude to taking care of the old lady; but also - to everything else? Every hurdle, every bumpy ride along the way - she faces with the same reactiveness. 

My heart sunk one moment, then it revived; for though I forced myself to 

There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever.

There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored.

Oh, my childhood! I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I 

About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future—such a future as mine—to be dead.

 And in catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature.

Withdrawing to a quiet nook, whence unobserved I could observe—the ball, its splendours and its pleasures, passed before me as a spectacle.

That evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol—blind, bloodless, and of granite core. 

We all think ourselves strong in some points; we all know ourselves weak in many.

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to 

 happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

Villette Annotated quotes

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