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Mr. Thackeray is a keen, ruthless satirist. Critics, it appears to me, do not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is - they call him 'humorous', 'brilliant' - his is a most scalping humour, a most deadly brilliancy - he does not play with his prey - he coils round it and crushes it in his rings.

Charlotte Brontë to publisher William Smith Williams, regarding WM Thackeray; Haworth, 11 December 1847

Read it long ago now, 'Prayer: a history' by Phillip Zaleski', p.31

"The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with."

Narrator, Chapter 8, Catch 22

"Finally, of course, the noun ‘dividation’ means an unrestricted
and generalized totality of acts of seeing things as separate. As
has been indicated earlier, di-vidation implies a division in the
attention-calling function of the word, in the sense that di-
vidation is seen to be different from vidation. Nevertheless, this
difference holds only in some limited context and is not to be
taken as a fragmentation, or actual break, between the mean-
ings and functions of the two words. Rather, their very forms
indicate that dividation is a kind of vidation, indeed a special
case of the latter. So ultimately, wholeness is primary, in the
sense that these meanings and functions pass into each other to
merge and interpenetrate. Division is thus seen to be a con-
venient means of giving a more articulated and detailed
description to this whole, rather than a fragmentation of
‘what is’."

A paragraph from Wholeness and the Implicate Order,
Chapter 3: "The Rheomode: an experiment with language and thought"
David Bohm

Emily will never suffer more in this world. She was torn from us, conscious and panting, in the fullness of her attachment, in the prime of her own days, in the promise of her power. We have not the conflict of her strangely strong spirit or its fragile frame before us. The anguish of seeing her suffer is over -- the spectacle of Death has gone by -- the loss is now ours but not hers. She is at peace with no need to tremble for the hard frost or keen wind, because she does not feel them. There is no Emily in Time or Earth -- she is nowhere now.


Charlotte Brontë on the death of Emily Jane; Haworth, 23 December, 1848

My sister Emily had a particular love for the moors and there is not a knoll of heather nor a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet but reminds me of her. The distant shores were Anne's delight, and when I look around she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it - now I dare not read it - and am driven often to wish I could taste one draught of oblivion and forget much that, while mind remains, I shall never forget.

Charlotte Brontë to James Taylor on the loss of her sisters; Haworth, 22 May 1850

From a web-comic not a book, http://existentialcomics.com/comic/283

A perfectly secluded life gave her retiring manners and habits. In Emily's nature the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated culture and an unpretending outside lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero. She had no worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life; she would fail to defend her most manifest rights, or to consult her most legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world. Her will was not very flexible. Her temper was magnanimous, but warm and sudden; her spirit was altogether unbending.


Charlotte Brontë regarding her sister Emily
The Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell; Haworth, 19 September 1850

(I need an interpreter between me and the world, too. )

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one.

Peter Hitchens - Abolition of Britain, 1999, quoting Mr Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death.

“I am not an angel, and I will not be one until I die. I will be myself.”

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847).

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I'm not currently reading Jane Eyre, but I'm posting in honour of Charlotte's 203rd birthday.
Charlotte is an angel now. Rest in peace.

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.


Excerpt from "The Prisoner", Emily Brontë (undated)

Dimly she realised one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after effects have to be encountered at their worst.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence (1928)

For all of us who struggle with trauma.
#Freedom09

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die