# Quote — Charlotte Brontë, Villette

> No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

- Author: [Charlotte Brontë](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte.md)
- Book: [Villette](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/villette.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB#Villette_(1853)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/villette/no-mockery-in-this

## More from this book

> I told him how we kept fewer forms between us and God; retaining, indeed, no more than, perhaps, the nature of mankind in the mass rendered necessary for due observance. I told him I could not look on flowers and tinsel, on wax- lights and embroidery, at such times and under such circumstances as should be devoted to lifting the secret vision to Him whose home is Infinity, and His being — Eternity. That when I thought of sin and sorrow, of earthly corruption, mortal depravity, weighty temporal woe — I could not care for chanting priests or mumming officials; that when the pains of existence and the terrors of dissolution pressed before me — when the mighty hope and measureless doubt of the future arose in view — _then_, even the scientific strain, or the prayer in a language learned and dead, harassed: with hindrance a heart which only longed to cry — "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/villette/i-told-him.md)

> There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/villette/there-is-in-lovers.md)

> Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/villette/liberty-lends-us-her.md)