Great Throughts Treasury

"'And then you would like me as well as your father?' observed he more cheerfully. 'But papa says you would love me better than him, and all the world, if you were my wife-so I'd rather you were that!' 'No! I should never love anybody better than papa,' she returned gravely. 'And people hate their wives, sometimes; but not their sisters and brothers, and if you were the latter, you would live with us, and papa would be as fond of you, as he is of me."

"And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then--if you don't believe me, you don't know me--till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!"

"Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living"

"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?"

"And you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle? Here! and here! replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and another on her breast: in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong!"

"And wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

"Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss's neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?"

"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 no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong."

"As it spoke I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!", and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear."

"Because you are not fit to go there, I answered. All sinners would be miserable in heaven."

"Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

"Because, he said, I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you - you'd forget me."

"Besides, he's MINE, and I want the triumph of seeing MY descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers' lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives! But that consideration is sufficient: he's as safe with me, and shall be tended as carefully as your master tends his own."

"But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; the struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends mute music sooths my breast — unuttered harmony that i could never dream till earth was lost to me. Then dawns the invisible; the unseen its truth reveals;"

"But because he is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

"But both their minds tending to the same point—one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed—they contrived in the end to reach it."

"But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate admiration for it, if only her precious person were secure from injury!"

"But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)"

"But the country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their Bible that he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales, you'll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on 'em looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night since his death."

"But there's this one difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost, rendered worst than unavailing."

"But there's this difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver."

"But when the days of golden dreams had perished, and even Despair was powerless to destroy; then did I learn how existence could be cherished, strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy."

"But, thou art ever there, to bring the hovering vision back, and breathe new glories o'er the blighted spring, and call a lovelier Life from Death, and whisper, with a voice divine, of real worlds, as bright as thine."

"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

"But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest."

"By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate."

"Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee, far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?"

"Catherine's face was just like the landscape--shadows and sunshine flitting over it in rapid succession; but the shadows rested longer, and the sunshine was more transient."

"Cold in the earth - and the deep snow piled above thee, / Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!"

"Cathy, this lamb of yours threatens like a bull! he said. It is in danger of splitting its skull against my knuckles. By God, Mr Linton, I'm mortally sorry that you are not worth knocking down!"

"Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers, from those brown hills, have melted into spring."

"Don't get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers."

"Doubtless Catherine marked the difference between her friends, as one came in and the other went out. The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley; and his voice and greeting were as opposite as his aspect."

"Don't you think Hindley would be proud of his son, if he could see him? Almost as proud as I am of mine. But there's this difference, one is gold put to the use of paving stones; and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost - rendered worse than unavailing."

"Earnsha was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point - one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it."

"Each of us had to start, stumbling and staggering across the threshold, and if we had our teachers scorned instead of helping us, we would continue even today to stumble and stagger."

"Even though I overthrew twenty times, that does not make it less beautiful or less ugly to me... - A good heart helps to have a beautiful face, my boy, even if the person is monstrous. Did you know that a heart is hardened able to make the most beautiful person in a real monster."

"Ere this speech ended, I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further.”"

"Existence, after losing her, would be hell."

"First melted off the hope of youth then fancy's rainbow fast withdrew and then experience told me truth in mortal bosoms never grew 'twas grief enough to think mankind all hollow servile insincere but worse to trust to my own mind and find the same corruption there."

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree"

"For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it."

"From now I can take it all! If most wicked person, a face and slap her, I not only give him the other cheek, even as you ask forgiveness for having provoked it."

"For that mist may break when the sun is high and this soul forget its sorrow and the rose ray of the closing day may promise a brighter ‘morrow."

"God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall."

"Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf."

"Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home."

"Good words, I replied. But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear."

"Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has not taste."

"He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, with that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars; winds take a pensive tone and stars a tender fire and visions rise and change which kill me with desire."