Wuthering Heights Key Quotes

negative descriptive phrases for heathcliff

“beggarly interloper”, “imp of satan”, “gipsy brat”

heathcliff first acknowledging the racial prejudice against him

“i wish i had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!”

motif of heathcliff being referred to as a cuckoo

“he’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg […] a bird of bad omen” / “beggarly interloper”

heathcliff being associated with hell - being a product of his environment growing up

“his [hindley] treatment of the latter [heathcliff] was enough to make a fiend of a saint”

comparison between edgar and heathcliff

“the contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley”

heathcliff encapsulating a byronic hero - rough around the edges yet irresistable, somehow

“divested of…”

“divested of roughness though too stern for grace”

nelly upholding religious views against heathcliff (and his actions)

“for shame heathcliff! it is for god to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive”

nelly finding religious serenity in catherine’s death

“my mind was never in a holier…”

“my [nelly] mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest [catherine]”

spiritual tie between heathcliff and catherine - their affections seem to transcend all

“she had a wondrous…”

“she had a wondrous constancy to old attachments; even heathcliff kept his hold on her affections unalterably”

motif of heathcliff not belonging in heaven - catherine’s acceptance of living elsewhere after death if its with him

“if I were in heaven, nelly, I should be extremely miserable […] heaven did not seem to be my home”

catherine and heathcliff being one - cosmically tethered, twin flames

“nelly, I am heathcliff! whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same”

heathcliff’s rejection of catherine’d death - their love transcending all realms, heaven and hell

“because misery, and degradation..”

“because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing god or satan could inflict would have parted us”

apostrophe - heathcliff addressing catherine desperately in death

“you say I killed you - haunt me then!”

love’s eternal torment - heathcliff’s inability to forget catherine is chemical; he feels supernaturally bereaved

“the entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”

heathcliff hell-bent on making hindley’s life a misery

“if I might have the privilege of […] painting the house with hindley’s blood” / “the intensest anguish at having made himself the instrument of thwarting his own revenge”

catherine’s self-centred, cunning attempt at enacting revenge on both heathcliff and edgar

“I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own”

isabella’s resent towards heathcliff

“if I were only sure it would kill him, I’d kill myself directly!” / “for what misery laid on heathcliff could content me unless I had a hand in it?”

analeptic irony in lockwood’s dream of catherine through the window - gothic imagery

“I pulled its wrist on the broken pane, rubbed to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes”

byronic hero - description of heathcliff after he returns to WH

“a half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire”

animalistic switch/imagery of heathcliff when sititng with catherines dying body

“he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog”

animalistic (dog-like) imagery + motif of windows upon catherines death

“I wont stray..”

“I wont stray five yards from your window”

catherine’s burial spot

“in the corner of the kirkyard where the wall is so low that the heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor”

edgar almost embracing an effeminate side when caring for catherine dying

“no mother could have nursed a child more devotedly than edgar tended her”

hellish imagery of heathcliff and catherine coming together in her death

“they burned with anguish; they did not melt”

neither heathcliff nor catherine can attain heaven if the other is not apart of it

“is it not sufficient for your internal…”

“is it not sufficient for your internal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell"?”

catherine’s description of living at TG

“this shattered prison”

nelly describing cathy’s countenance juxtaposingly to her mother’s, catherine

“her [cathy] anger was never furious; her love never fierce; it was deep and tender”

switching of gender roles in catherine and hindley as children

“hindley named a fiddle […] she chose a whip”

cathy’s reasoning behind marrying Edgar

"he will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband" 

cathy allowing herself to be ill to spite Heathcliff

‘Oh, I will die...since no one cares a thing about me’

cathy regretting her marriage to edgar

"I wish I were a girl again, half savaged and hardy and free"

heathcliff to young cathy when forcing her to marry linton

‘stand off, or I shall knock you down’