“The cool peace and dewy sweetness of the night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point, but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.”

“I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened my hope, bore my spirit, triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy,--a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium; judgment would warn passion”

“Arraigned at 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 which I have indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way , a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;-- I pronounced judgment 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 the poison as if it were nectar.”

“The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

“Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination- her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope. ”

“Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”

“To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”