Wuthering Heights Quotes: 40 Famous Lines with Speaker, Chapter and Meaning

The Short Version

The most famous Wuthering Heights quotes come from one scene in chapter 9, when Catherine tells Nelly that Heathcliff is “more myself than I am” and then says “Nelly, I am Heathcliff”. Below are 40 quotes from Emily Brontë’s novel, copied word for word, with speaker, chapter and context. Chapters run 1 to 34; in two-volume editions, chapter 15 is Volume Two, chapter I.

Fair warning: the death and ghost quotes give away the ending.

Jump to: Most famous quote · Love · Nature and the moors · Revenge · Death and ghosts · Class · By character · Misquoted lines · Quotes table

What Is the Most Famous Quote from Wuthering Heights?

It is Catherine’s confession to Nelly in chapter 9, the night she accepts Edgar Linton’s proposal:

“…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.” — Catherine, chapter 9

She says it just after admitting it “would degrade” her to marry Heathcliff, who has already crept out, so he never hears it. Then comes the other famous line:

“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” — Catherine, chapter 9

Wuthering Heights Quotes About Love

“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.” — Catherine, chapter 9

Catherine believes marrying Edgar cannot separate her from Heathcliff. The book proves her wrong.

“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.” — Heathcliff, chapter 14

Heathcliff to Nelly, about Edgar, while pressing her to arrange a meeting with the sick Catherine.

“I wish I could hold you … till we were both dead!” — Catherine, chapter 15

Their last meeting. Catherine accuses him of planning to forget her once she is in the grave.

“I have not broken your heart – you have broken it – and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” — Heathcliff, chapter 15

His answer in the same scene: she chose Edgar, so she destroyed them both.

“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” — Heathcliff, chapter 16

The last words of his outburst in the Grange garden after Nelly tells him Catherine is dead.

Wuthering Heights Quotes About Nature and the Moors

“‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.” — Lockwood, chapter 1

Lockwood explains the house’s name on his first visit.

“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.” — Catherine, chapter 9

Edgar is the seasons, Heathcliff the stone beneath.

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free…and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!” — Catherine, chapter 12

Delirious after starving herself, Catherine begs Nelly to open the window so she can feel the wind off the moors.

“He wanted all to lie in an ecstacy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle, and dance in a glorious jubilee.” — Cathy, chapter 24

Young Cathy on her quarrel with Linton about heaven’s happiness (the edition spells it “ecstacy”).

Wuthering Heights Quotes About Revenge

“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!” — Heathcliff, chapter 7

Still a boy, Heathcliff tells Nelly what he is brooding on by the fire.

“The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them” — Heathcliff, chapter 11

He tells Catherine he seeks no revenge on her; he will take it out on others.

“I have no pity! I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!” — Heathcliff, chapter 14

Said to Nelly, moments after he shoves his new wife, Isabella, out of the room.

“Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” — Heathcliff, chapter 17

Over little Hareton, after Hindley’s death. He will raise Hindley’s son as Hindley raised him.

“I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready, and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished!” — Heathcliff, chapter 33

After watching Cathy and Hareton together, he admits his project has lost its point.

“I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.” — Heathcliff, chapter 33

The same speech. He does not repent; he just stops caring.

Wuthering Heights Quotes About Death and Ghosts

“Let me in – let me in!” — the ghost-child, chapter 3

In Lockwood’s nightmare, an ice-cold hand grabs his through the broken window.

“twenty years, I’ve been a waif for twenty years!” — the ghost-child, chapter 3

The voice gives her name as Catherine Linton. Lockwood rubs the child’s wrist on the broken glass to free himself.

“I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there” — Catherine, chapter 15

Catherine calls her body a “shattered prison” in her last scene with Heathcliff.

“haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe – I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” — Heathcliff, chapter 16

His prayer that Catherine should not rest while he lives.

“The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!” — Heathcliff, chapter 33

Years later, everything he sees reminds him of her.

“Today, I am within sight of my heaven – I have my eyes on it – hardly three feet to sever me!” — Heathcliff, chapter 34

He has stopped eating. His heaven is Catherine, not God’s.

“They’s Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t’ Nab” — a shepherd boy, chapter 34

After Heathcliff’s burial, a crying boy tells Nelly he dare not pass two figures on the moor.

“I believe the dead are at peace, but it is not right to speak of them with levity.” — Nelly, chapter 34

Nelly’s reply when Lockwood jokes that the shut-up house will be left to ghosts.

“…and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.” — Lockwood, chapter 34

The last words of the novel, spoken at the three graves of Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff.

Wuthering Heights Quotes About Class

“a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.” — Mr Linton, chapter 6 (as Heathcliff reports it)

How Edgar’s father sizes up young Heathcliff when the boy is caught at Thrushcross Grange.

“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!” — Heathcliff, chapter 7

Heathcliff to Nelly, after Catherine comes home from the Grange dressed like a lady.

“You’re fit for a prince in disguise.” — Nelly, chapter 7

Nelly tidies Heathcliff and tells him to imagine noble parents.

“My name is Hareton Earnshaw … and I’d counsel you to respect it!” — Hareton, chapter 2

The heir of the Heights, raised as a servant, bristles when Lockwood mistakes his place.

Wuthering Heights Quotes by Character

Catherine. Besides chapter 9, her sharpest line is her warning to Isabella about Heathcliff:

“He’s not a rough diamond – a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic; he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.” — Catherine, chapter 10

And her plan, before the illness that kills her: “I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own.” (chapter 11)

Heathcliff. Most of his best lines are under love, revenge and death above. His darkest joke comes in chapter 33, when he calls his revenge “a poor conclusion”.

Nelly Dean. The narrator’s own voice is practical and moralising:

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves” — Nelly, chapter 7

“the crown of all my wishes will be the union of those two” — Nelly, chapter 32, about Cathy and Hareton

Lockwood. The outsider who frames the story, on his first day:

“A perfect misanthropist’s Heaven” — Lockwood, chapter 1

Isabella. Two months married, she writes to Nelly:

“Is Mr Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil?” — Isabella, chapter 13

“I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me” — Isabella, chapter 17

The second generation. Edgar’s last words to his daughter, chapter 28: “I am going to her, and you darling child shall come to us”. Cathy stands up to Heathcliff when he comes to take her from the Grange:

“Mr Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you” — Cathy, chapter 29

And when Linton dies and Heathcliff asks how she feels:

“He’s safe, and I’m free” — Cathy, chapter 30

Famous Lines People Misquote

I checked each of these against the text.

• “Whatever our souls are made of…” The full sentence goes on: “and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” The line before is “he’s more myself than I am”, not “more me than I am”. And Heathcliff never hears it. Nelly says he “listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he staid to hear no farther.”
• “I am Heathcliff” It is said to Nelly, not to Heathcliff, in chapter 9, not at her deathbed. The sentence starts “Nelly, I am Heathcliff” and keeps going.
• “I love the ground under his feet…” This one is often posted as a Heathcliff line. In chapter 9, Catherine says it about Edgar, when Nelly asks how she loves him.
• “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” Heathcliff says this, not Catherine, in chapter 16, after she has died.
• The window ghost. Kate Bush’s 1978 song puts “Cathy” at Heathcliff’s window. In the book, the ghost tells Lockwood, a stranger, that she is “Catherine Linton”, and says “I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!”
• The last line. It is Lockwood’s, not Nelly’s, and the wording is “unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth”, not “unquiet sleep”.

All 40 Quotes at a Glance

For the full story behind these lines, see the Wuthering Heights summary, the characters guide and the ending explained.