"Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; Hell has no gate, but men will bore through to get there."

Sunday, April 18, 2010

False Choice & Romantic Voice-

Having thus acknowledged that I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class- a small one as far as I know- but not therefore to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendancy of such books as Jane Eyre and in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong, whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry, that parent of crime, an insult to piety- that region of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions. I would remind them of certain simple truths.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things indeed are diametrically opposed. They are as distinct as is vice from virtue. People too often confound them. They should not be confounded. Appearance should not be mistaken for truth, narrow human doctrines that only tend to elate and magnify a few should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is, I repeat it, a difference and it is a good and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth. To let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose, to raise the guilding and show base metal under it. To pentrate the sepulchre and reveal charnal relics. But hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

-Charlotte Bronte



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 color of my mind.
I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home;
And I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth;
And the angels were so angry that they flung me out
Into the middle of the heath at the top of Wuthering Heights,
Where I woke sobbing for joy.

-Emily Bronte

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