Great Throughts Treasury

"If rain drops were kisses, I'd send you showers. If hugs were seas, I'd send you oceans. And if love was a person I'd send you me! Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

"I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide."

"I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!"

"If thou weren't more a lass than a lad, I'd fell thee this minute, I would; pitiful lath of a crater!"

"If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave."

"'I'll be very kind to him, you needn't fear,' he said, laughing. 'Only nobody else must be kind to him: I'm jealous of monopolising his affection."

"I'll go with him as far as the park,' he said. 'You'll go with him to hell!' exclaimed his master,"

"I'll be as dirty as I please, and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty!"

"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."

"In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine, connected him fearfully with her. 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!"

"I'm glad, for I shall be master of the Grange after him--and Catherine always spoke of it as her house. It isn't hers! It's mine: papa says everything she has is mine. All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of her room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine."

"I'm happiest when most away I can bear my soul from its home of clay on a windy night when the moon is bright aAnd the eye can wander through worlds of light— when I am not and none beside— nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky—but only spirit wandering wide through infinite immensity."

"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."

"It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him."

"It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive."

"It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?"

"It is no more my business to marry Edgar Linton than to be in heaven and if the wicked man who is here and had not degraded Heathcliff, I would have never thought. It would degrade me myself now than to marry Heathcliff. Also does he ever know how I like, and this, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. From whatever our souls are made, his and mine are the same and the Linton is as different from ours as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

"Incomparably beyond, and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven her spirit is at home with God!"

"Is she sane?’ asked Mrs. Linton, appealing to me. ‘I’ll repeat our conversation, word for word, Isabella; and you point out any charm it could have had for you."

"Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I shan't tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married..."

"Instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, there lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in."

"It is a poor conclusion, is it not?’ he observed, having brooded awhile on the scene he had just witnessed: ‘an absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished! My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me. But where is the use? I don’t care for striking: I can’t take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I had been laboring the whole time only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from being the case: I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing .'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in its shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life that I hardly remember to eat and drink. Those two who have left the room are the only objects which retain a distinct material appearance to me; and that appearance causes me pain, amounting to agony. About HER I won't speak; and I don't desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were invisible: her presence invokes only maddening sensations. HE moves me differently: and yet if I could do it without seeming insane, I'd never see him again! You'll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so,' he added, making an effort to smile, 'if I try to describe the thousand forms of past associations and ideas he awakens or embodies. But you'll not talk of what I tell you; and my mind is so eternally secluded in itself, it is tempting at last to turn it out to another."

"It was a strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope, through eighteen years!"

"It was not me who broke your heart, you've broken yourself, and in doing so have ruined, by the way, he added. And the worst part is my turn, because I have still strength. You think I want to live? What kind of life will be mine when you? Oh, my God! Would you like to you live if you locked up in a tomb soul?"

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

"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."

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

"It's a pity he cannot kill himself with drink."

"It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will! She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, He's considering-he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!"

"It's scary! Single - person means so much and so many different things!"

"It's silly to complain of misfortune with twenty years in advance."

"It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?"

"I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I'm too happy, and yet I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself."

"I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. 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."

"I've watched thee every hour — I know my mighty sway — I know my magic power to drive thy griefs away —"

"Kiss me again, but don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer--but yours! How can I?"

"Leave me alone, I need to think, as I think, do not suffer."

"Look on the grave where thou must sleep thy last, and strongest foe; it is endurance not to weep, if that repose seem woe."

"Let grief distract the sufferer's breast, and night obscure his way; they hasten him to endless rest, and everlasting day."

"Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me!"

"Love never dies."

"Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?"

"May she wake in torment! he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment! he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

"Mama never told me I had a father."

"May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then."

"Make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change, and you and I never change. Catherine to Heathcliff"

"My cousin fancies you are an idiot. There you experience the consequence of scorning 'book larning,' as you would say. Have you noticed, Catherine, his frightful Yorkshire pronunciation?"

"Mr. Heathcliff, you're a cruel man, but you're not a fiend; and you won't, from mere malice, destroy, irrevocably, all my happiness."

"My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all 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 should not seem a part of it. 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."

"My great thought is 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 into a mighty stranger. I would not seem apart of it."