BRONTË, EMILY - Wuthering Heights
QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION
“Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair
to divide the desolation between us.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 1
“looking, meantime, in
my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid
to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my
unexpected advent.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 1
“the answer, uttered
so savagely that I started. The tone in which the words were said
revealed a genuine bad nature. I no longer felt inclined to call
Heathcliff a capital fellow.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 2
“They could not every
day sit so grim and taciturn; and it was impossible, however ill-tempered they
might be, that the universal scowl they wore was their every-day countenance.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 2
“Catherine’s library
was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used,
though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had
escaped, a pen-and-ink commentary—”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 3
“The distance from the
gate to the grange is two miles; I believe I managed to make it four, what with
losing myself among the trees, and sinking up to the neck in snow: a
predicament which only those who have experienced it can appreciate.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 3
“He complained so seldom, indeed, of such stirs as
these, that I really thought him not vindictive: I was deceived completely, as
you will hear.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 4
“I daresay, up yonder. He was, and is yet most likely, the wearisome
at self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to
himself and fling the curses to his neighbours.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 5
“A wild, wicked slip she was—but she had the
bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish: and, after
all, I believe she meant no harm; for when once she made you cry in good
earnest, it seldom happened that she would not keep you company, and oblige you
to be quiet that you might comfort her.
She was much too fond of Heathcliff.
The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate
from him:”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 5
“What she was, and where she was
born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to
recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 6
“He would not even have seen after
their going to church on Sundays, only Joseph and the curate reprimanded his
carelessness when they absented themselves; and that reminded him to order
Heathcliff a flogging, and Catherine a fast from dinner or supper. But it was one of their chief amusements to
run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after
punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at.
The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get
by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached; they forgot
everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had
contrived some naughty plan of revenge; and many a time I’ve cried to myself to
watch them growing more reckless daily,
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 6
“Miss Earnshaw? Nonsense!” cried the dame; “Miss Earnshaw
scouring the country with a gipsy!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 6
“What culpable carelessness in her
brother!” exclaimed Mr. Linton, turning from me to Catherine. “I’ve understood from Shielders”’ (that was
the curate, sir) ‘“that he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism. But who is this? Where did she pick up this companion? Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition
my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool—a little Lascar, or an
American or Spanish castaway.”
‘“A wicked boy, at all events,”
remarked the old lady, “and quite unfit for a decent house! Did you notice his language, Linton? I’m shocked that my children should have
heard it.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 6
“The curtains were still looped up
at one corner, and I resumed my station as spy; because, if Catherine had
wished to return, I intended shattering their great glass panes to a million of
fragments, unless they let her out.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 6
“Cathy stayed at Thrushcross Grange
five weeks: till Christmas. By that time
her ankle was thoroughly cured, and her manners much improved.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 7
“and then she looked round for
Heathcliff. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw
watched anxiously their meeting; thinking it would enable them to judge, in
some measure, what grounds they had for hoping to succeed in separating the two
friends.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 7
“Cathy sat up late, having a world
of things to order for the reception of her new friends: she came into the
kitchen once to speak to her old one; but he was gone, and she only stayed to
ask what was the matter with him, and then went back.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 7
“But, Nelly, if I knocked him down
twenty times, that wouldn’t make him less handsome or me more so. I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and
was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will
be!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 7
“On my inquiring the subject of his
thoughts, he answered gravely—‘I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley
back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I
can only do it at last. I hope he will
not die before I do!’
‘For shame, Heathcliff!’ said
I. ‘It is for God to punish wicked
people; we should learn to forgive.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 7
“I have read more than you would
fancy, Mr. Lockwood. You could not open
a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of
also: unless it be that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French; and those
I know one from another: it is as much as you can expect of a poor man’s
daughter.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 7
“For himself, he grew desperate: his sorrow
was of that kind that will not lament.
He neither wept nor prayed; he cursed and defied: execrated God and man,
and gave himself up to reckless dissipation.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 8
“The master’s bad ways and bad
companions formed a pretty example for Catherine and Heathcliff. His treatment of the latter was enough to
make a fiend of a saint.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 8
“She never had power to conceal her
passion, it always set her whole complexion in a blaze.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 8
“There followed another long pause, during which I
perceived a drop or two trickle from Catherine’s cheek to the flags. Is she sorry for her shameful conduct?—I
asked myself. That will be a novelty:
but she may come to the point—as she will—I sha’n’t help her! No, she felt small trouble regarding any
subject, save her own concerns.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“You accepted him!
Then what good is it discussing the matter? You have pledged your word, and cannot
retract.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“Then I put her through the following catechism: for
a girl of twenty-two it was not injudicious.
‘Why do you love him, Miss Cathy?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“Worst of all.
And now, say how you love him?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over
his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions,
and him entirely and altogether. There
now!’
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and
young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you.
The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that,
probably; and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former
attractions.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“But there are several other handsome, rich young
men in the world: handsomer, possibly, and richer than he is. What should hinder you from loving them?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“You may see some; and he won’t always be handsome,
and young, and may not always be rich.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with
me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like
wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely
miserable.’
‘Because you are not fit to go there,’ I
answered. ‘All sinners would be
miserable in heaven.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but
did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars?
whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of
my brother’s power.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the
woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal
rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9
“A charming introduction to a hermit’s life!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 10
“I am too weak to read; yet I feel as if I could
enjoy something interesting.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 10
“Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the
cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it; and,
as a proof, I’ll go make my peace with Edgar instantly. Good-night!
I’m an angel!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 10
“The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me
of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once a gush of child’s sensations
flowed into my heart.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 11
“and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld
my early playmate seated on the withered turf: his dark, square head bent
forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. ‘Poor Hindley!’ I exclaimed,
involuntarily. I started: my bodily eye
was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face and stared
straight into mine! It vanished in a
twinkling; but immediately I felt an irresistible yearning to be at the Heights.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 11
“the stone struck my bonnet; and then ensued, from
the stammering lips of the little fellow, a string of curses, which, whether he
comprehended them or not, were delivered with practised emphasis, and distorted
his baby features into a shocking expression of malignity. You may be certain this grieved more than
angered me.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 11
“What is it to you?’ he growled. ‘I have a right to kiss her, if she chooses;
and you have no right to object. I am
not your husband: you needn’t be jealous of me!’
‘I’m not jealous of you,’ replied the mistress; ‘I’m
jealous for you.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 11
“Having levelled my palace, don’t erect a hovel and
complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 11
“Heathcliff’s talk was outrageous, after you left
us; but I could soon have diverted him from Isabella, and the rest meant
nothing. Now all is dashed wrong; by the
fool’s craving to hear evil of self, that haunts some people like a demon! Had Edgar never gathered our conversation,
he”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 11
“Oh, I will die,’ she exclaimed, ‘since no one cares
anything about me. I wish I had not
taken that.’ Then a good while after I
heard her murmur, ‘No, I’ll not die—he’d be glad—he does not love me at all—he
would never miss me!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 12
“I should not have spoken so if I had known her true
condition, but I could not get rid of the notion that she acted a part of her
disorder.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 12
“How dreary to meet death, surrounded by their cold
faces!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 12
“You are one of those things that are ever found
when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 12
“She went of her own accord,” answered the master,
“she had a right to go if she pleased. Trouble me no more about her. Hereafter
she is only my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has
disowned me.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 12
“How did you contrive to preserve the common
sympathies of human nature when you resided here? I cannot recognise any sentiment which those
around share with me.
The second question I have great interest in; it is
this—Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is
he mad? And if not, is he a devil?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 13
“It racked me to recall past happiness and the
greater peril there was of conjuring up its apparition,”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 13
“My slumber was deep and sweet, though over far too
soon.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 13
“Forgiveness!’ said Linton. ‘I have nothing to forgive her, Ellen. You may call at Wuthering Heights this
afternoon, if you like, and say that I am not angry, but I’m sorry to have lost
her; especially as I can never think she’ll be happy. It is out of the question my going to see
her, however: we are eternally divided; and should she really wish to oblige
me, let her persuade the villain she has married to leave the country.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 14
“I puzzled my brains how to put more heart into what
he said, when I repeated it; and how to soften his refusal of even a few lines
to console Isabella.
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 14
“You know as well as I do, that for every thought
she spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 14
“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being,
he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 14
“It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to
discover that I did not love her. I
believed, at one time, no lessons could teach her that! And yet it is poorly learnt; for this morning
she announced, as a piece of appalling intelligence, that I had actually
succeeded in making her hate me!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 14
“Will you forget me?
Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, “That’s the
grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her
long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my children are
dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going
to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!” Will you say so, Heathcliff?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 15
“I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have,
Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be
parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same
distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger, that will be worse
to remember than my harsh words!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 15
“Because misery and degradation, and death, and
nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own
will, did it. I have not broken your
heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 15
“Do you believe such people are happy in the other
world, sir? I’d give a great deal to
know.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 16
“I wished, yet feared, to find him”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 16
“I was weeping as much for him as her: we do
sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or
others.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 16
“I’ve recovered from my first desire to be killed by
him: I’d rather he’d kill himself!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 17
“Catherine had an awfully perverted taste to esteem
him so dearly, knowing him so well.
Monster! would that he could be blotted out of creation, and out of my
memory!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 17
“He has just come home at dawn, and gone up-stairs
to his chamber; locking himself in—as if anybody dreamt of coveting his
company!”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 17
“But you’ll not want to hear my moralising, Mr.
Lockwood; you’ll judge, as well as I can”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 17
“Papa would tell you, Miss,’ I answered, hastily,
‘that they are not worth the trouble of visiting. The moors, where you ramble with him, are
much nicer; and Thrushcross Park is the finest place in the world.’
‘But I know the park, and I don’t know those,’ she
murmured to herself.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 18
“He
talked about “our house,” and “our folk.”
I thought he had been the owner’s son.
And he never said Miss: he should have done, shouldn’t he, if he’s a
servant?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 18
“Still, I thought I could detect in his physiognomy
a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed. Good things lost amid a wilderness of weeds,
to be sure, whose rankness far over-topped their neglected growth; yet,
notwithstanding, evidence of a wealthy soil, that might yield luxuriant crops
under other and favourable circumstances.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 18
“Edgar Linton was silent a minute; an expression of
exceeding sorrow overcast his features: he would have pitied the child on his
own account; but, recalling Isabella’s hopes and fears, and anxious wishes for
her son, and her commendations of him to his care, he grieved bitterly at the
prospect of yielding him up, and searched in his heart how it might be
avoided. No plan offered itself: the
very exhibition of any desire to keep him would have rendered the claimant more
peremptory: there was nothing left but to resign him”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 19
“Aunt
Isabella had not you and me to nurse her,’ I replied. ‘She wasn’t as happy as Master: she hadn’t as
much to live for.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 22
“I
pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable
than that he should be: that proves I love him better than myself.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 22
“As
soon as she supposed me absorbed in my occupation, she recommenced her silent
weeping: it appeared, at present, her favourite diversion. I suffered her to enjoy it a while; then I
expostulated: deriding and ridiculing all Mr. Heathcliff’s assertions”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 22
“You
may be right, Ellen,’ she answered; ‘but I shall never feel at ease till I
know. And I must tell Linton it is not
my fault that I don’t write, and convince him that I shall not change.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 22
“I
can’t be prevented from going to Wuthering Heights, except by inflicting misery
on two people; whereas, if you’ll only not tell papa, my going need disturb the
tranquillity of none. You’ll not tell,
will you? It will be very heartless, if
you do.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 24
“I
also threw little light on his inquiries, for I hardly knew what to hide and
what to reveal.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 26
I
despise you, and will have nothing to say to any of you! When I would have given my life for one kind
word, even to see one of your faces, you all kept off. But I won’t complain to you! I’m driven down here by the cold; not either
to amuse you or enjoy your society.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 30
“Mr.
Hareton is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge,’ I said, coming to
his rescue. ‘He is not envious, but
emulous of your attainments.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 31
“observed,—‘But,
Mrs. Heathcliff, we have each had a commencement, and each stumbled and
tottered on the threshold; had our teachers scorned instead of aiding us, we
should stumble and totter yet.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 31
“He
followed my example, and left the room; but presently reappeared, bearing half
a dozen volumes in his hands, which he threw into Catherine’s lap,
exclaiming,—‘Take them! I never want to
hear, or read, or think of them again!’
‘I
won’t have them now,’ she answered. ‘I
shall connect them with you, and hate them.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 31
“My
first interview with her grieved and shocked me: she had altered so much since
our separation.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 32
“He’s
just like a dog, is he not, Ellen?’ she once observed, ‘or a cart-horse? He does his work, eats his food, and sleeps
eternally! What a blank, dreary mind he must have! Do you ever dream, Hareton? And, if you do, what is it about?”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 32
“It
is well you are out of my reach,’ he exclaimed.
‘What fiend possesses you to stare back at me, continually, with those
infernal eyes? Down with them! and don’t
remind me of your existence again. I
thought I had cured you of laughing.”
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 32
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 32
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.