Top 50 Quotes from Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë’s Best Lines

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December 26, 2024
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We have delved into the masterpiece that is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, a liminal dark, gothic fairy tale that has inspired countless others in the last two hundred years. We have compiled a detailed summary of the classic and even a character analysis of those unforgettable heroes. But now it is time to focus solely on the mastery of Brontë’s writing, by making a list of the most magnificent and timeless quotes of the novel. 

Wuthering Heights

What better way to witness Heathcliff and Catherine’s almost demonic love and cruelty for each other than studying each line separately—a true benefit of being a bookworm we suppose? Dissecting this pinnacle of English literature, one gets to observe Brontë’s verbal expertise and each character’s identity and perspective. This classic novel has had many adaptations over the years but BookTok is on the edge of its seat waiting for the release of the latest one—and so are we. From dividing people with searing book club questions to improving one’s reading efficiency, Wuthering Heights can do it all.  

Without further ado, let’s dig into those iconic lines. And if you are looking for your next gothic read, we suggest our One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig Summary!

A Quick Synopsis of Wuthering Heights

For those of you who have not graced yourselves with reading this gem to any book collection, we shall you a quick tour of the book. 

Mr. Lockwood has rented Thrushcross Grange in the Yorkshire moors and is visiting Wuthering Heights to meet his landlord Mr. Heathcliff. He soon realizes there is a darkness looming in the air, so he bestows Ellen “Nelly” Dean, one of the oldest servants, to narrate the story of the manor and its tenants. 

Years ago, Mr. Earnshaw on one of his trips to the northern part of England, namely Liverpool, finds a young orphan named Heathcliff. To his family’s dismay, Heathcliff is brought to be raised along with the other Earnshaw children in Wuthering Heights. The eldest son, Hindley Earnshaw is relentless in his abuse of Heathcliff, but young Catherine Earnshaw quickly develops feelings for the young orphan. The two grow up to be deeply in love with one another, but their love is possessive, obsessive and dark. However, Catherine Earnshaw is not destined for a life of simplicity, ambition burns inside her. 

Fast forward to a few years later, Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw are dead, Hindley is the master of Wuthering Heights, Heatchliff has run away ow able to take Hindley cruelty and Catherine’s seeming rejection while Catherine marries Edgar Linton, the master of Thrushcross Grange. Hindley is driving the estate to destruction due to his alcoholism and grief for the loss of his wife, neglecting his son Hareton as well. To solve everyone’s problems, Heathcliff comes back mysteriously wealthy, lending Hidley the money he needs to further dig hismelf a hole. Despite his return though, Catherine is wed to Edgar, so he marries Edgar sister Isabella Linton, by pretending to be her knight in shining armor. Soon, Isabella witnesses his true colors and escapes to London to raise their son Linton. But fate is cruel and will not be denied. Catherine becomes with child and dies in childbirth, leaving Heathcliff alone and in tatters, now the master of Wuthering Heights after Hindley’s death. 

Alone and betrayed, Heathcliff thinks he is being haunted by Catherine’s spirit, bordering on the lines of insanity. He treats Hareton, the late Hindley’s son, cruelly, thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse. To further entangle everyone is his madman’s web, when his wife dies and his sickly son comes to the moors, he forces him to court Catherine Linton or Cathy to avoid confusion with her mother. Some time later the two marry, Edgar Linton dies and Heathcliff gets his hands on the Linton estate as well. When his son dies, too, he keeps Cathy and treats her like a servant, until he finally dies, tormented and demented by his love for Catherine that never left his heart. To break the cycle of abuse young Cathy and Hareton Earnshaw fall in love while Heathcliff is gone and forgotten. 

The Fifty Best Wuthering Heights Quotes

The allure of the books of the time lies not only in the complex characters and intriguing stories but also in the language used to convey those deepest feelings. One look at any of the female-written classics, like Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, will give a scandalous amount of iconic quotes—check our PaP Quotes list. 

For our Austen fans or those who want to venture into her writing, we suggest you check out our guide to Jane Austen and the summary and character analysis of Pride and Prejudice. 

Timeless Words on Love and Devotion

  1. “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
  1. “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 should not seem a part of it.”

  2. “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 can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”

  3. “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.”

  4. “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you—haunt me then.”

  5. “I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”

  6. “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.”

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

  8. “Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you—they'll damn you. You loved me—what right had you to leave me? What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? 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.”

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

  10. “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?:

  11. “He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.”

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

  13. “The moment her regard ceased, I could have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then - if you don't believe me, you don't know me - till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!”

  14. “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!”

  15. “I hate him for himself, but despise him for the memories he revives.”

  16. “I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be — that proves I love him better than myself.”

  17. “How cruel, your veins are full of ice-water and mine are boiling.”

  18. “Existence, after losing her, would be hell”

  19. “You must forgive me, for I struggled only for you.”

  20. “They forgot everything the minute they were together again.”

  21. “Hush, my darling! Hush, hush, Catherine! I'll stay. If he shot me so, I'd expire with a blessing on my lips.”

  22. “I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears.”

  23. “Heathcliff, 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.”

  24. “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?”

The Search for Self and Freedom

  1. “I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
  1. “She was a wild, wicked slip of a girl. She burned too bright for this world.”
  1. “I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

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

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

  4. “The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. 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.”

  5. “I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

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

  7. “By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.”

  8. “Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes...”

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

  10. “He might as well plant an oak in a flowerpot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!”

  11. “In secret pleasure — secret tears. This changeful life has slipped away”

  1. “He had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner: and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, 'Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!”

  2. “I'm not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve .”


Lessons in Morality and Virtue

  1. “Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.”
  1. “It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.”
  1. “Honest people don't hide their deeds.”
  1. “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.”

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

  3. “If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.” “Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”
  1. “But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.”

  2. “Thoughts are tyrants that return again and again to torment us.”

  3. “Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?”

  4. “Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living”

To Sum Up

What best time than the end of the year to pick up a few classics and fill your TBR. Wuthering is nothing short of one of the greatest novels in British literature, despite the polarizing views of more contemporary scholars. We personally cannot see how this story could be anything else than a dark and tumultuous romance of damned soul mates, highlighting life’s cruelty and human nature’s greed. Until our next post, dear bookworm!

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is the famous quote from Wuthering Heights?

There are many famous quotes from Wuthering Heights, but the most famous one is: “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” It has remained a fan favorite for more than two hundred years, and for good reason. 

2. What are the last lines of Wuthering Heights?

The novel closes with Mr. Lockwood’s thoughts when visiting Catherine’s, Edgar’s and Heathcliff’s graves. The final lines are the following: “I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

3. What is so great about Wuthering Heights?

Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, is considered one of the best classic, gothic novels in British literature. It is a staple for many literature experts and students. Emily Brontë’s only full-length novel is a harsh depiction of the destructive nature of love and the ugly sides of human existence; an open criticism of social standards and even the realities of life in England at the time.

Nina Siscou
Article written by:

Christina Tsoukala

Always living in her own enchanted little world, Christina discovered the magic that can be hidden within the pages of a book when one dares to take a closer look from a tender age. An avid reader, she is constantly inspired to delve into the secrets woven between the lines and challenges herself to find her own voice amidst the chaos. She is a dedicated fan of the classics, but the supernatural creatures that have tormented readers for years are her kryptonite. The mastery it takes to infuse the author's essence, molded by the era they grew up in to their innermost desires fascinates her. Undoubtedly, putting her passion and knowledge on paper has a mesmerizing allure on her, and following the steps of so many other dreamers before her she wishes to leave her mark in the literary world. Guided by T.S Eliot’s haunting words: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” she intends to wreak havoc in the minds of her future readers.