Charlotte Brontë

My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which had been my master's --- which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr Rochester's arms --- it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted -- confidence destroyed!

Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.

I'm a universal patriot...my country is the world.

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!

the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.

St. John,_ I said, __ think you are al­most wicked to talk so. I am dis­posed to be as con­tent as a queen, and you try to stir me up to rest­less­ness! To what end?___o the end of turn­ing to profit the tal­ents which God has committed to your keep­ing; and of which He will surely one day de­mand a strict ac­count. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anx­iously__ warn you of that. And try to re­strain the dis­pro­por­tion­ate fervour with which you throw your­self into com­mon­place home pleasures. Don__ cling so tena­ciously to ties of the flesh; save your con­stancy and ar­dour for an ad­e­quate cause; for­bear to waste them on trite tran­sient ob­jects. Do you hear, Jane?___es; just as if you were speak­ing Greek. I feel I have ad­e­quate cause to be happy, and I will be happy. Good­bye!

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.

His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows.

There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation.

I never met your likeness. Jane: you please me, and you master me - you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced - conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph _I_ can win.

Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -"My heart will break!"What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, "Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept."Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame Beck.To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - "Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving."Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke."But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -"Sortez d'ici!""I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she threatened pertinaciously."Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, "Femme! sortez _ l'instant!"He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt."What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; "it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.""You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, "but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less fiercely, "be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!"This time, in the "leave me" there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death."It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he."It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said.

Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror- glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids swollen and purple.On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me - my heart seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why and for whom I despaired.

You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you--and you may mark my words--you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current- -as I am now.

His veins were dark with a vivid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy.

You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it.

Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

Mr Brocklehurst: Do you know where the wicked go after death?Jane Eyre: They go to hell, was my ready and orthodox answer.. . . Mr: What must you do to avoid it? Jane: [Thinking] I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come was objectionable: " I must keep in good health , and not die.