I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.
Emily BronteRead
I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be β that proves I love him better than myself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True love prioritizes the happiness of the beloved over one's own comfort or joy.
In this quote, Emily Bronte conveys a profound sense of selflessness associated with love. The speaker expresses a willingness to endure personal suffering rather than allow their loved one to face any misery, emphasizing that their love is greater than their own desires or well-being. This reflects the idea that true love entails sacrificing one's own happiness for the sake of another's joy, showcasing the deep emotional bonds that exist in genuine relationships.
Themes
LoveSelflessnessSacrificeRelationshipsHappiness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a wedding speech to highlight the nature of commitment in love.
More from Emily Bronte
All quotes βI ran to the children's room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never laid down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed, and listened. I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.
Emily BronteRead
Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.
Emily BronteRead
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
Emily BronteRead
He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.
Emily BronteRead
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again?
Emily BronteRead
Similar quotes
But at the end, if we are brave enough to love, if we are strong enough to forgive, if we are generous enough to rejoice in another's happiness, and if we are wise enough to know that there is enough love to go around for us all, then we can achieve a fulfillment that no other living creature will ever know, we can reenter paradise.
Harold S. KushnerRead
We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths
Mark TwainRead
Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.
Margaret GeorgeRead
My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.... I never felt my mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses
John KeatsRead
Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart
Terry PratchettRead