Heathcliff's Quotes & Sayings

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. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. — Emily Bronte

I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing. — Emily Bronte

He would have recoiled still more had he been aware that her attachment rose unsolicited, and was bestowed where it awakened no reciprocation of sentiment; for the minute he discovered its existence, he laid the blame on Heathcliff's deliberate designing. — Emily Bronte

I absolutely adored Wuthering Heights and fell in love with Heathcliff as most girls do. — Margaret Forster

I was on HPD
Heathcliff Protection Duty
in Wuthering Heights for two years, and believe me, the ProCaths tried everything. I personally saved him from assassination eight times. — Jasper Fforde

Matt is a tortured soul,' Amanda insisted. 'He's Heathcliff and you're Cathy. He's Rochester and you're Jane Eyre. He's-'
'Darcy and I'm Elizabeth. I get it. And you're wrong. — Robin Brande

A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. — Emily Bronte

I think sometimes in literature we kind of police ourselves. I know a lot of people talked about Twilight, and they would say, oh, but the heroine, she lets this man make her decisions. And I thought, that may not be the particular fantasy or trope that works for me.
But listen man, I read Wuthering Heights. I wanted me a little Heathcliff action. I mean, why can't we indulge that fantasy and also be like, And now I would like the ERA passed, please. Also, this lipstick is fuckin' killer. — Libba Bray

So drop the Mr. Rochester-Mr. Darcy-Heathcliff British stuck-uppity and treat her like the treasure she is — Sylvain Reynard

I was Isabella, fawning on Heathcliff. And no one wants to be Isabella. — Samantha Ellis

Mrs. Heathcliff is my daughter-in-law,' said Heathcliff, corroborating my surmise. He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction: a look of hatred; — Emily Bronte

I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles. — Marisha Pessl

I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. 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. — Emily Bronte

I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. 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! — Emily Bronte

Perhaps your envy counselled her Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? But I've most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of those. — Emily Bronte

Mr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar stairs with vexatious phlegm. — Emily Bronte

Is Heathcliff not here?' she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors. — Emily Bronte

More alone than she had ever been, separated from Heathcliff who had left her at Penistone Crag, Cathy had been wandering lost on the moor until at last she saw a light winking in the distance. — N J Dorrian

YESTERDAY afternoon set in misty and cold. I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire, instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights. On coming up from dinner, however, (N.B. - I dine between twelve and one o'clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady, taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not, comprehend my request that I might be served at five) - on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention, and stepping into the room, I saw a servant-girl on her knees surrounded by brushes and coal-scuttles, and raising an infernal dust as she extinguished the flames with heaps of cinders. This spectacle drove me back immediately; I took my hat, and, after a four-miles' walk, arrived at Heathcliff's garden-gate just in time to escape the first feathery flakes of a snow-shower. — Emily Bronte

That is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul. — Emily Bronte

He is more me than I am' Catherine to Heathcliff — Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights, considered the most romantic book ever written by those who had never read it carefully. — Catherine Lowell

Within the sphere of English fiction Heathcliff stands alone. Therefore, if we do not understand him, then it is highly probable we were never intended to do so, so that we should try to realize and accept the fact that there may be just one or two things yet left in heaven and earth not dreamt of by our philosophy. — Eleanor Mcnees

We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will! — Emily Bronte

Her eyelids fluttered. "Francis," she murmured.
"Cathy," he murmured back.
"Heathcliff," muttered Kit, as he set about making sandwiches. — Justine Larbalestier

I also read about Heathcliff's unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights. — Jasper Fforde

Choosing between day and night. Edgar and Heathcliff. — Eileen Favorite

she just hadn't met anyone who compared to the heroes of the books she loved. A Mr. Darcy, or a Heathcliff, or even, in the right mood, a Christian Gray . . . — Jenny Colgan

I myself have never had one, but now I can picture one. I didn't like Wuthering Heights at first, but the minute that specter, Cathy, scrabbled her bony fingers on the window glass - I was grasped by the throat and not let go. With that Emily I could hear Heathcliff's pitiful cries upon the moors. — Mary Ann Shaffer

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. — Charlotte Bronte

Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty rises from your greater misery! You are miseable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldnt't be you! — Emily Bronte

I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. 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. 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. — Emily Bronte

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

A person is very strong... when he seeks to protect something. — Heathcliff

Abby_Donovan: Heathcliff was a misogynistic asshole.
MarkBaynard: Could you explain that to my Lit 101 class? I hate to see all those impressionable young females swoowing over him like he's Edward Cullen.
Abby_Donovan: I've always been Team Jacob myself. And Team Mr Rochester. — Teresa Medeiros

Heathcliff and Cathy, like Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet! — Jandy Nelson

The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights: he held firm possession, and proved to the attorney, who, in his turn, proved it to Mr. Linton, that Earnshaw had mortaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming; and he, Heathcliff, was the mortgagee.
In that manner, Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father's inveterate enemy; and lives in his own house as a servant deprived of the advantage of wages, and quite unable to right himself, because of his friendlessness, and his ignorance that he has been wronged. — Emily Bronte

What misery laid on Heathcliff could content me, unless I have a hand in it? I'd rather he suffered less, if I might cause his sufferings and he might know that I was the cause. Oh, I owe him so much. — Emily Bronte

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 are going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!" Will you say so, Heathcliff? — Emily Bronte

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. — Emily Bronte

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. — Emily Bronte

He shall never know how I love him — Emily Bronte

Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes. — Emily Bronte

Out on the moors,
The lonely moors,
I roll around in sheep poo.
Heathcliff, it's youuuuu,
I hate you, I love you tooooo.
Let me in, I'm here, it's meeeee,
Catheeeeeeee.
Look out of your windooooow. — Louise Rennison

I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind ... So don't talk of our seperation again ... — Emily Bronte

We'd be like Cathy and Heathcliff. Harry and Hermione. Liam and Noel."
...
"Well, I'm not sure they're the best example anyway," Sean points out, handing me a coffee. "Nor are the others. None of them exactly ended up together."
"That doesn't matter. What matters is what they did together, what they could achieve side by side. We'd be unstoppable if we were together. — Sangu Mandanna

And yes, I confess, when I looked at him, I thought of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester and Maxim de Winter ... and how could I not, when I had been waiting for them to step out of the pages of the books I loved; when I knew them so well, read them inside out and into myself? — Justine Picardie

I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again - it is hers yet - he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it ... — Emily Bronte

It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him. — Emily Bronte

Few of us make any serious effort to remember what we read. When I read a book, what do I hope will stay with me a year later? If it's a work of nonfiction, the thesis, maybe, if the book has one. A few savory details, perhaps. If it's fiction, the broadest outline of the plot, something about the main characters (at least their names), and an overall critical judgment about the book. Even these are likely to fade. Looking up at my shelves, at the books that have drained so many of my waking hours, is always a dispiriting experience. One Hundred Years of Solitude: I remember magical realism and that I enjoyed it. But that's about it. I don't even recall when I read it. About Wuthering Heights I remember exactly two things: that I read it in a high school English class and that there was a character named Heathcliff. I couldn't say whether I liked the book or not. — Joshua Foer

Come in! come in !' he sobbed.
'Cathy, do come. Oh do -once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time - Catherine, at last! — Emily Bronte

Yeah! "I love you" is subject to the law of diminishing returns; like one or two other critical weekly elements of a relationship, it loses a bit of thrilling value every time you get it out.' ... That's what happens with "I love you", that same phrase that you once shouted Hollywood or Heathcliff-like in the lashing raining, now- now you are saying it dumbly at the end of every phone conversation, a follow-on from," I'll be back for dinner." Once it came out spontaneous rush, it forced itself out; now it's reflex. — David Baddiel

Will you give up Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you to be my friend and his at the same time; and I absolutely require to know which you choose. — Emily Bronte

My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. 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. — Emily Bronte

What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff?
I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author? — Jean Webster

I know he has a bad nature,' said Catherine; 'he's your son. But I'm glad I've a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me and for that reason I love him. Mr Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery! You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldn't be you! — Emily Bronte

I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise? — Margaret Atwood

My hips bristle with totems and talismans, proof that I am not simply a character in a fixed book or film. I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment. Advancing beside Archer, I am resplendent in my savage finery of seized power. In my service charge the collected blackguards of a dozen tyrants now dispatched to a lesser oblivion. My fingers, stained crimson with the blood of despots, are not the fingers which paged through the paper lives of helpless romantic heroines. No more am I a passive damsel who waits for circumstance to decide her fate; now have I become the scalawag, the swashbuckler, the Heathcliff of my dreams bent on rescuing myself. For now do I embody all the traits I had so hoped to find in Goran. Meaning: No longer am I limited. — Chuck Palahniuk

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. — Emily Bronte

The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him ... — Emily Bronte

I can only conclude that her feelings toward me are very similar to what I've read about love: passionate, random, inexplicable, and totally uncontrollable. She can't help hating me any more than Heathcliff could help loving Cathy. It's simply written in the stars. Which would be quite sweet if she wasn't such a cow all the time. — Holly Smale

Tiff like in Breakfast at Tiffany's,' he says. 'Right?'
I couldn't be more shocked. 'Um ... yes, that's right - it's an old movie.'
'Is it? Don't watch that much TV. I've only heard of the book - got it at home. I bought it 'cause Truman Capote wrote it. I was stoked by In Cold Blood. He wrote that, too. You read it?'
'No.'
'Aw, you gotta. It rocks.'
I look away as if I've been suddenly distracted by something out the window. It's my version of the pause button. There's a lot of information to process. Here's a boy my own age; he shakes my hand, he talks to me - not just to ask directions to the toilet - and he reads books.
Heathcliff? — Bill Condon

It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!"
She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, "He's considering-he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me! — Emily Bronte

Heathcliff. The "hero" of Wuthering Heights. Although no one knows why.
He's mean, moody, and possibly a bit on the pongy side. Cathy loves him, though. She shows this by viciously rejecting him and marrying someone else for a laugh. Still, that is true love on the moors for you. — Louise Rennison

Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me. — Jasper Fforde

You loved me-then 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. I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."
~Heathcliff — Emily Bronte

Lily liked the fog, and didn't even mind the cold wind. She reckoned that Ocean Beach, the dunes there, and the Sunset were the closest San Francisco was going to come to the foreboding, wind-swept moors of England, where she had aspired to suffer romance and heartache when she was a kid. The foghorn, however, rather than a lonesome lament that conjured images of Heathcliff's dark figure, waiting with clenched jaw on the moor for her to bring light and warmth into his life, sounded like a distressed moose tied up in her neighbor's garage, having his nut sack singed with jumper cables at a precise interval calculated to keep her from falling asleep. Which, in turn, made her think of what complete douche bags people could be when all you wanted to do was borrow a defibrillator. Then she was awake and angry. — Christopher Moore

Will." Her hands pulled at his shirt, and it came away, the buttons tearing, his head shaking free of the fabric, all wild dark hair, Heathcliff on the moors. His hands were less sure on her dress, but it came away as well, off over her head, and was cast aside, leaving Tessa in her chemise and corset. She went motionless, shocked at being so undressed in front of anyone but Sophie, and Will took a wild look at her corset that was only part desire.
"How - ," he said. "Does it come off?"
Tessa couldn't help herself; despite everything, she giggled. "It laces," she whispered. "In the back. — Cassandra Clare

I love ghost stories but kind of left them alone after my teens and came back to it after playing Heathcliff in 'Wuthering Heights' on the radio. — Tom Goodman-Hill

You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too. It is Heathcliff with Catherine. It is a vampire with a passionate love stronger than death. We crave that kind of focus from someone else. We'd give anything to be that "loved." But that focus is not some soul-deep pinnacle of perfect devotion - it's only darkness and the tormented ghosts of darkness. It's strange, isn't it, to see a person's gaping emotional wounds, their gnawing needs, as our romance? We long for it, I don't know why, but when we have it, it is a knife at our throat on the banks of Greenlake. It is an unwanted power you'd do anything to be rid of. A power that becomes the ultimate powerlessness. — Deb Caletti

The difference in their age had begun to matter, she had just turned forty and Jack was in his sixties, no longer the 'Brooding Heathcliff' that used to sign birthday cards to her. He wanted less and less to meet people, keeping her to himself, shutting the world out, drawing the heavy velvet curtains too early on a bright evening. If she announced that they might invite a few friends, he worried, began to wonder what time these friends might arrive and more importantly, what time they would leave. — Edna O'Brien

He's not a rough diamond - a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. — Emily Bronte

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 - so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable.- — Emily Bronte

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic," Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious. — John Irving

It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree. — Helen Fielding

He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!'
'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. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain. — Emily Bronte

What a trajedy to be a martyr for love, yet we worship the characters anyways because they remind us of how we struggled. — Shannon L. Alder

I am Heathcliff! — Emily Bronte

Men know what they want. Men make concrete plans. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn't on the floor. Men tip generously. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men go to the dentist. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they're thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before. (Okay, maybe men aren't exactly like this. This is what I've cobbled together from the handful of men I know or know of, ranging from Heathcliff Huxtable to Theodore Roosevelt to my dad.) Men know what they want and they don't let you in on their inner monologue, and that is scary. — Mindy Kaling

Mr. Heathcliff, you're a cruel man, but you're not a fiend; and you won't, from mere malice, destroy, irrevocably, all my happiness. — Emily Bronte