Wuthering Heights
Critique • Quotes • Quotes • At the movies
First U.S. edition, 1848First publication
1847 in England
Literary form
Novel
Genres
Literary
Writing language
English
Author's country
England
Length
Approx. 116,000 words
Notable lines
1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow!
— First lines
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
From preface to second edition
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; still it wailed, "Let me in!" and maintaining its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.
"For shame, Heathcliff!" said I. "It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive."
"No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall," he returned.
"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."
"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...."
"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."
"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."
"The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them."
"I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain."
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.
— Last lines
Critique • Quotes • Quotes • At the movies
