Charlotte Brontë

“I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms; my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect; it seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner--to join in the same enterprise.”

“His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapor sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere.”

“It is not saying too much; I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money-speculation. And I do not want a stranger--unsympathizing, alien, different from me. I want my kindred--those with whom I have full fellow-feeling.”

“I soon forgot storm in music.”

“Capisce ora come stanno le cose, non è vero?Dopo una giovinezza e una maturità trascorse in parte in mezzo a inesprimibili sofferenze, e in parte nella più desolata solitudine, io ho trovato colei che posso veramente amare...io ho trovato lei.Lei è la mia simpatia, la miglior parte di me stesso, il mio angelo custode, e io le sono unito da un legame fortissimo. La credo buona, intelligente, attraente; il mio cuore ha concepito una passione grave e fervida e mi spinge verso di lei, l'attira al centro e alla sorgente della mia esistenza, fa gravitare la mia vita attorno a lei, e ardendo d'una fiamma pura e possente, fonde lei e me in un essere solo.”

“I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. ”

“I sought her eye, desirous to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in vain for a glimpse of soul. I am no Oriental; white necks, carmine lips and cheeks, clusters of bright curls, do not suffice for me without that Promethean spark which will live after the roses and lilies are faded, the burnished hair grown grey. In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life--November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect.”

“Ogni atomo della sua carne mi è caro come la mia propria; l'amerei malata, l'amerei infelice.Il suo animo è il mio tesoro e anche se si smarrisse continuerebbe ad esserlo. Se delirasse, le mie braccia la tratterrebbero, e non una camicia di forza; una sua stretta, anche se inconsapevole e feroce, mi alletterebbe e anche se lei mi si avventasse addosso furibonda come ha fatto stamane quella donna, l'accoglierei con un abbraccio energico sì, ma non meno tenero.E quando fosse calma, non avrebbe altro guardiano, altra infermiera che me; saprei vegliarla con infinita tenerezza, anche se lei non potesse ricompensarmi con nessun sorriso e non mi stancherei di guardarla negli occhi anche se più non mi riconoscessero.”

“I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the gazer.”

“A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play;”

“Not a tie hold me to human society at this moment - not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are - none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature.”

“Remorse is the poison of life.”

“A little roving, solitary thing.”

“I was left there alone - winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained.”

“How dare I, Mrs Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.”

“I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all around her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.”

“My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary; Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary Over the path of the poor orphan child.Why did they send me so far and so lonely, Up where the moors spread and gray rocks are piled?Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.Ye, distant and soft, the night-breeze is blowing, Clouds there are none, and clear starts beam mild;God, in His mercy, protection is showing, Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing, Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,Still will my Father, with promise and blessing, Take to his bosom the poor orphan child.There is a thought that for strength should avail me; Thought both of shelter and kindred despoiled;Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me; God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”

“There is something in that, I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment; delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them.”

“The word book acted as a transient stimulus”

“Gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire.”

“You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream”

“I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted.”

“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.”

“These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.”

“Jane Eyre "I desired more...than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn't help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”

“You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.”

“Alas! never had I loved him so well!”

“Then you and I should bid good-bye for a little while?"I suppose so, sir."And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I'm not quite up to it."They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer."Then say it."Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present."What must I say?"The same, if you like, sir."Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?"Yes."It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands for instance; but no--that would not content me either. So you'll do nothing more than say Farwell, Jane?"It is enough, sir; as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many."Very likely; but it is blank and cool--'Farewell.”

“He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. 'Oh, Jane! my hope - my love - my life!' broke in anguish from his lips.”

“I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms,’ says he; ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.”

“There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much, too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous...Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, any opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this...Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character--watched them closely, keenly shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear conciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that ever-toturing pain arose.I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connecions suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and have died to them.”

“When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.Arraigned to my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night--of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rapidly devoured the ideal--I pronounced judgement to this effect--That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar."You," I said, "a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You're gifted with the power of pleasing him? You're of importance to him in any way? Go!--your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference--equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to dependent and novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe! Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night? Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does no good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and if discovered and responded to, must lead into miry wilds whence there is no extrication."Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: tomorrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own pictures, faithfully, without softening on defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory--you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imageine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye--What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!--no sentiment!--no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution..."Whenever, in the future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them--say, "Mr. Rochester might probably win that noble lady's love, if he chose to strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this indignent and insignifican plebian?""I'll do it," I resolved; and having framed this determination, I grew calm, and fell asleep.”

“Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps not your hour, the waiting waters will stir; in some shape, though perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for which it bled, the healing herald will descend.”

“I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.”

“You are human and fallible.”

“Look twice before you leap.”

“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still. "Because, he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me.”

“Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of life, but the desire of his eyes”

“I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. ”

“I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart. ”

“God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness -- to glory?”

“I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.”

“With what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged!”

“What have you been doing during my absence?''Nothing particular; teaching Adele as usual.''And getting a good deal paler than you were - as I saw at first sight. What is the matter?''Nothing at all, sir.''Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?''Not the least.''Return to the drawing-room: you are deserting too early.''I am tired, sir.'He looked at me for a minute.'And a little depressed,' he said. 'What about? Tell me.''Nothing - nothing, sir. I am not depressed.''But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes - indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on the flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don't neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adele. Good-night, my..' He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.(Jane and Mr Rochester)”

“I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold. Who blames me? Many, no doubt: and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.”

“The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.”

“Some lives are thus blessed: it is God's will: it is the attesting trace and lingering evidence of Eden. Other lives run from the first another course. Other travelers encounter weather fitful and gusty , wild and variable - breast adverse winds, are belated and overtaken by the early closing winter night. Neither can this happen without the sanction of God; and I know that amidst His boundless works, is somewhere stored the secret of this last fate's justice: I know that His treasures contain the proof as the promise of its mercy.”

“I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.”

“Shall I?” I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his brow, commanding, but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied myself in idea his wife. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour: accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his ineradicable ambition. . . . I should suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under a rather stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came; and sentiments growing there, fresh and sheltered, which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife—at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—this would be unendurable.”