“What I am, it is useless to say - those whom it concerns feel and find it out. To all others I wish only to be an obscure, steady-going private character.”

“Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return. ”

“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 could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.”

“Do you think me, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless?”

“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts — when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break — at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent — I am ever tender and true. (Mr Rochester to Jane)”

“The standard heroes and heroines of novels, are personages in whom I could never, from childhood upwards, take an interest, believe to be natural, or wish to imitate: were I obliged to copy these characters, I would simply -- not write at all. Were I obliged to copy any former novelist, even the greatest, even Scott, in anything , I would not write -- Unless I have something of my own to say, and a way of my own to say it in, I have no business to publish; unless I can look beyond the greatest Masters, and study Nature herself, I have no right to paint; unless I can have the courage to use the language of Truth in preference to the jargon of Conventionality, I ought to be silent.”