This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
You and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence apart from us. What would be the sense of self has been created, if contained only in myself? The big disappointments I had were the dislikes of Heathcliff, and I felt each from the beginning: what is it makes me live. If everything else was over, and he remained, I would continue to exist, and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would become a huge unknown. My love for Linton is like the foliage of the forest. Time will change it, I'm sure, just as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks: provides a little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I love who kills me! But how I can forgive anyone who kills you?
Love |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,’ she muttered.
Love |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
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!
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction, a look of hatred unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul.
Love |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I make you my queen. Whatever happens out there, here, you will always be my queen. Heathcliff to Catherine (Hey, Heathcliff, women don't want to be queens, just loved.)
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.
Love |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
If he loved with all the strength of his soul mean, not love in eighty years as I do in a day.
Love |
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.
Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.
Earth | Force | Gold | Life | Life | Little | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?
Love |
Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.
Bigotry | Economics | Future | God | Kill | Love | Man | Means | Men | Past | Position | Religion | Will | Worth | God |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
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.
Duty | Earth | Eternity | Happy | Hell | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Peculiarity | Repose |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. 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.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least, for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! 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!
Love |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
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!
Love |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, so sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; and, deepening still the dreamlike charm, wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.