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
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.
Art | Change | Danger | Darkness | Doubt | Dreams | Grief | Guile | Hate | Heart | Hope | Liberty | Life | Life | Pain | Quiet | Reason | Suffering | Suspicion | Thankfulness | Trust | Truth | World | Danger | Art |
I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.
Cause | Convention | Freedom | Life | Life |
I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love, and freedom in motherhood.
Cause | Convention | Death | Force | Freedom | Frivolity | Grave | Life | Life | Mind | Right | World |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I don't know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness.
Distress | Grave | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Past | Rest | Safe | Tears | Think |
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 |
Served as inspiration for Roger Baldwin, a future founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Change | Improvement | Life | Life | Price | Revolution | Struggle | Worth | Loss |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Nature and Books belong to the eyes that see them.
Atheism... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.
Cause | Convention | Death | Force | Freedom | Frivolity | Grave | Life | Life | Mind | Right | World |
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.
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
I think there are ghosts that roam the world, I know. Stay always with me, in the form you want, fool me again! But the only thing you can do is leave me alone in this abyss where I cannot find you.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
She's fainted, or dead,' I thought: 'so much the better. Far better that she should be dead, than lingering a burden and a misery-maker to all about her.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
You have left me so long to struggle against death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I am the only being whose doom no tongue would ask no eye would mourn I never caused a thought of gloom a smile of joy since I was born in secret pleasure — secret tears this changeful life has slipped away as friendless after eighteen years as lone as on my natal day.
Earth | Eternity | Happy | Hell | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Repose |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
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.
Dependence | Ignorance | Land | Right |