165 years ago, on October 16, 1847, Jane Eyre was first published by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name “Currer Bell.

(Source: thebrontes)

"I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other."

Anne Brontë, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall

"

Why should such gloomy silence reign,
And why is all the house so drear,
When neither danger, sickness, pain,
Nor death, nor want, have entered here?

We are as many as we were
That other night, when all were gay
And full of hope, and free from care;
Yet is there something gone away.

The moon without, as pure and calm,
Is shining as that night she shone;
But now, to us, she brings no balm,
For something from our hearts is gone.

Something whose absence leaves a void–
A cheerless want in every heart;
Each feels the bliss of all destroyed,
And mourns the change–but each apart.

The fire is burning in the grate
As redly as it used to burn;
But still the hearth is desolate,
Till mirth, and love, and PEACE return.

‘Twas PEACE that flowed from heart to heart,
With looks and smiles that spoke of heaven,
And gave us language to impart
The blissful thoughts itself had given.

Domestic peace! best joy of earth,
When shall we all thy value learn?
White angel, to our sorrowing hearth,
Return–oh, graciously return!

"

Domestic Peace by Anne Brontë

(Source: thebrontes)

Gillian Anderson reads Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Ingratitude’. →

"I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise."

Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

"I love the silent hour of night, for blissful dreams may then arise, revealing to my charmed sight what may not bless my waking eyes."

Anne Brontë, Poems

"

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.

"

No Coward Soul Is Mine, Emily Jane Bronte. (via corethoughts)

"Because 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."

Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

"But smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad."

Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (via acoustic-funeral)

(Source: divine-despair)

"His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss."

Villette, Charlotte Brontë (via aninsufferableknowitall)