# Shirley

- Author: [Charlotte Brontë](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte.md)
- Quotes: 4
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/shirley

## Quotes

> This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/shirley/this-is-a-terrible.md)

> Old maids like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and the rich.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/shirley/old-maids-like.md)

> If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/shirley/if-you-think.md)

> I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/shirley/i-describe-imperfect.md)