Quotes on Villette

I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.

Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.

To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

Whatever my powers--feminine or the contrary--God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.

But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself?