Catherine Earnshaw Linton Quotes

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

“Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! . . . It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

“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.”

“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.”

“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it—but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

“In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!”

“I’m 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.”

“He shall never know I love him.”

“You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!”

“How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so!”

Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders.

“A wild, wicked slip she was— but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish: and, after all, I believe she meant no harm; for when once she made you cry in good earnest, it seldom happened that she would not keep you company, and oblige you to be quiet that you might comfort her.”

“I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?”

″...for when Heathcliff expressed contempt of Linton in his presence, she could not half coincide, as she did in his absence; and when Linton evinced disgust and antipathy to Heathcliff, She dared not treat his sentiments with indifference, as if depreciation of her playmate were of scarcely any consequence to her.”

“Nothing—only look at the almanack on that wall;” he pointed to a framed sheet hanging near the window, and continued, “The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me. Do you see? I’ve marked every day.”

“It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,” she muttered.

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

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 great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning:

“Nelly, will you keep a secret for me?” she pursued, kneeling down by me, and lifting her winsome eyes to my face with that sort of look which turns off bad temper, even when one has all the right in the world to indulge it.

“Yes, and it worries me, and I must let it out! I want to know what I should do. To-day, Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I’ve given him an answer. Now, before I tell you whether it was a consent or denial, you tell me which it ought to have been.”

“To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.”

“Why do you love him, Miss Cathy?” “Nonsense, I do—that’s sufficient.” “By no means; you must say why?” “Well, because he is handsome, and pleasant to be with.” “Bad!” was my commentary. “And because he is young and cheerful.

“And he will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband.”

“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 altogether. There now!”

“You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably; and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former attractions.”

“I don’t want your permission for that—I shall marry him: and yet you have not told me whether I’m right.” “Perfectly right; if people be right to marry only for the present.”

“Here! and here!” replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: “in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!”

“And so do I. I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it—but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

“All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”

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 different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

As soon as you become Mrs. Linton, he loses friend, and love, and all!

Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff.

“Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother’s power.”

Catherine, who kept her gaze fixed on him as if she feared he would vanish were she to remove it.

He did not raise his to her often: a quick glance now and then sufficed; but it flashed back, each time more confidently, the undisguised delight he drank from hers.

“I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice;”

“I’m not envious: I never feel hurt at the brightness of Isabella’s yellow hair and the whiteness of her skin, at her dainty elegance, and the fondness all the family exhibit for her.”

Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it;

“I’m not jealous of you,” replied the mistress; “I’m jealous for you. Clear your face: you sha’n’t scowl at me! If you like Isabella, you shall marry her. But do you like her? Tell the truth, Heathcliff! There, you won’t answer. I’m certain you don’t.”

“I know you have treated me infernally—infernally! Do you hear? And if you flatter yourself that I don’t perceive it, you are a fool; and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words, you are an idiot: and if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while!”

“Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice.”

“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!”

“Will you give up Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you to be my friend and his at the same time; and I absolutely require to know which you choose.”

How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.

We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come.

“You are one of those things that are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never!”

“I don’t want you, Edgar: I’m past wanting you. I’m glad you possess a consolation, for all you had in me is gone.”

“Catherine, last spring at this time, I was longing to have you under this roof; now, I wish you were a mile or two up those hills: the air blows so sweetly, I feel that it would cure you.”

Catherine Linton is as different now from your old friend Catherine Earnshaw, as that young lady is different from me.

Her appearance is changed greatly, her character much more so; and the person who is compelled, of necessity, to be her companion, will only sustain his affection hereafter by the remembrance of what she once was, by common humanity, and a sense of duty!

“The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood!”

You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me!

“I wish I could hold you,” she continued, bitterly, “till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”

“I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger, that will be worse to remember than my harsh words! Won’t you come here again? Do!”

You loved me—then what right had you to leave me? What right—answer me—

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 not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

“Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, every one, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!”

“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!”

Catherine had an awfully perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him so well.

Heathcliff, if I were you, I’d go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog.

You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can’t imagine how you think of surviving her loss.

“Catherine used to boast that she stood between you and bodily harm: she meant that certain persons would not hurt you for fear of offending her.”

But I loved Catherine too; and her brother requires attendance, which, for her sake, I shall supply. Now that she’s dead, I see her in Hindley: Hindley has exactly her eyes, if you had not tried to gouge them out, and made them black and red; and her—

″‘But then,’ I continued, holding myself ready to flee, ‘if poor Catherine had trusted you, and assumed the ridiculous, contemptible, degrading title of Mrs. Heathcliff, she would soon have presented a similar picture! She wouldn’t have borne your abominable behaviour quietly: her detestation and disgust must have found voice.’

“Only, Catherine, do me this justice: believe that if I might be as sweet, and as kind, and as good as you are, I would be; as willingly, and more so, than as happy and as healthy. And believe that your kindness has made me love you deeper than if I deserved your love”

He’ll never let his friends be at ease, and he’ll never be at ease himself!

Ellen, I’ve been very happy with my little Cathy: through winter nights and summer days she was a living hope at my side.

And, hard though it be to crush her buoyant spirit, I must persevere in making her sad while I live, and leaving her solitary when I die.

“Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years—incessantly—remorselessly—till yesternight;”

“You may laugh, if you will; but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her.”

“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!”

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:—