Great Throughts Treasury

"The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window."

"The intimacy thus commenced, and grew rapidly: though it encountered temporary interruptions. Earnshaw was not to be civilized with a wish; and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but their both 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."

"The Lord help us!' he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: 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."

"The old church tower and garden wall are black with autumn rain and dreary winds foreboding call the darkness down again"

"The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity."

"The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived."

"The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I'm tired, tired of being enclosed here. I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart, but really with it, and in it."

"The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them."

"The winter wind is loud and wild, come close to me, my darling child; forsake thy books, and mateless play; and, while the night is gathering grey, we'll talk its pensive hours away;—"

"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!"

"The night is darkening round me, the wild winds coldly blow; but a tyrant spell has bound me and I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending their bare boughs weighed with snow; the storm is fast descending, and yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, wastes beyond wastes below; but nothing drear can move me; I will not, cannot go."

"The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her"

"The nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her"

"The world is for me a hideous collection of memorabilia telling me she lived and I have lost her."

"The world is surely not worth living now, is it?"

"Then let my winds caress thee — thy comrade let me be — since naught beside can bless thee."

"Then you believe I care more for my own feelings than yours, Cathy? he said. No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Healthcliff, but because Mr. Healthcliff dislikes me and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity. I knew that you could not keep up an acquaintance with your cousin without being brought into contact with him; and I knew he would detest you, on my account; so for your own good, and nothing else, I took precautions that you should not see Linton again."

"There is not room for Death, nor atom that his might could render void: Thou - Thou art Being and Breath, and what Thou art may never be destroyed."

"They are afraid of nothing, I grumbled, watching their approach through the window. Together they would brave Satan and all his legions."

"They DO live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year's standing."

"They forgot everything the minute they were together again."

"This is nothing, cried she: I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I work sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. Ive no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

"Though earth and man were gone, and suns and universes ceased to be, and Thou wert left alone, every existence would exist in Thee."

"Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy."

"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 — he's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being — so, don't talk of our separation again — it is impracticable.-"

"Today I will not seek the shadowy region; its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; and visions rising, legion after legion, bring the unreal world too strangely near."

"Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends - they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."

"Two words would comprehend my future -- death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell."

"We must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering."

"Well I love the ground he walks on and the air we breathe and everything it touches and what he says. I like the way they look and behave, I like all of it up and down. That's it!"

"We'll see the same face of the wind toll. Does he also distorted in any other month of the two trees, destroying Was it? Heathcliff"

"Well, I love the ground he walks on and the air around him and everything he touches, and everything he says. I like the features of it and all its actions; like him around. Ready!"

"Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend--if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I'll try to break their hearts by breaking my own. That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to extremity!"

"Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul."

"Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering."

"We're dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts and visions to perplex us."

"What is that apathetic being doing?' she demanded, pushing the thick entangled locks from her wasted face. 'Has he fallen into a lethargy, or is he dead?"

"What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"

"What matters it, that, all around, danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, if but within our bosom's bound we hold a bright, untroubled sky, warm with ten thousand mingled rays of suns that know no winter days?"

"What use is it to slumber here: though the heart be sad and weary? What use is it to slumber here though the day rise dark and dreary?"

"What vain weathercocks we are! I, who had determined to hold myself independent of all social intercourse, and thanked my stars that, at length, I had lighted on a spot where it was next to impracticable - I, weak wretch, after maintaining till dusk a struggle with low spirits and solitude, was finally compelled to strike my colors; and under pretense of gaining information concerning the necessities of my establishment, I desired Mrs. Dean, when she brought in supper, to sit down while I ate it; hoping sincerely she would prove a regular gossip, and either rouse me to animation or lull me to sleep by her talk."

"When weary with the long day’s care, and earthly change from pain to pain, and lost, and ready to despair, thy kind voice calls me back again O my true friend, I am not lone while thou canst speak with such a tone! So hopeless is the world without, the world within I doubly prize; thy world where guile and hate and doubt and cold suspicion never rise; where thou and I and Liberty have undisputed sovereignty. What matters it that all around danger and grief and darkness lie, if but within our bosom’s bound we hold a bright unsullied sky, warm with ten thousand mingled rays of suns that know no winter days? Reason indeed may oft complain for Nature’s sad reality, and tell the suffering heart how vain its cherished dreams must always be; and Truth may rudely trample down the flowers of Fancy newly blown. But thou art ever there to bring the hovering visions 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. I trust not to thy phantom bliss, yet still in evening’s quiet hour with never-failing thankfulness I welcome thee, benignant power, sure solacer of human cares and brighter hope when hope despairs."

"Why did you betray your own heart Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. ... You loved me - then what right had you to leave me? Because ... nothing God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of you own will, did it. I have not 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. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave? [...] I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?"

"Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?"

"Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes."

"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: Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, and what Thou art may never be destroyed."

"Worthless as wither'd weeds."

"Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"

"Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, "wuthering" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed. One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house, and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun."

"While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate."