Wuthering Heights Quotes

“Do I want to live? . . . [W]ould you like to live with your soul in the grave?”

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

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

“Honest people don’t hide their deeds.”

“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’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.”

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

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

“‘Are you possessed with a devil,’ he pursued, savagely, ‘to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me?‘”

“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort.”

“You shouldn’t lie till ten. There’s the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one-half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

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

“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!”

“You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?”

“I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Time brought resignation, and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.”

″‘He’s not a human being,’ she retorted; ‘and he has no claim on my charity. 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.‘”

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

“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.”

“It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.”

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

“He shall never know I love him.”

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat!”