At eighteen most people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification.
God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest.
Now I wept: Helen Burns was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards.
Genius is said to be self-conscious.
The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates.
No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.
I was no bright lady's shadow.
Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.
He is not to them what he is to me.
To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to an obscure aspirant.
Having a large world of his own in his own head and heart, he tolerated confinement to a small, still corner of the real world very patiently.
Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!
Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Jane.
Ex-act-ly, pre-cisely: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.
But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong – that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued.
Hopeless of the future, I wished but this- that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.
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.
What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?
You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance -- a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage -- forget it.
And what is hell? Can you tell me that?
It is always the way of events in this life...no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on.
There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever.
Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life. Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.
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.
Better, perhaps, to die quickly a pleasant death, than drag on long a charmless life.
It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls her pride to her aid, desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes and resolves to meet the false one that night at the ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanor, how little his desertion has affected her.
I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.
Heathcliff, if I were you, I'd go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog. The world is surely not worth living in now, is it? You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can't imagine how you think of surviving her loss.
Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you.
Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior.
God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die.
It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.
I see on your cheek two tears which I know are hot as two sparks, and salt as two crystals of the sea.
Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation.
If I failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer?
I'm not speaking to you through mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, as it passes through the grave and stood at God's feet equal. As we are.
Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure - you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.
He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it, could not but feel it too.
Still we are none of us perfect ...
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.
This girl who stands so quiet and grave at the mouth of hell. This girl who is all quietness and sanity and innocence. You wondered why I wanted her?
Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.
If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease.
Make my happiness — I will make yours. God pardon me! he subjoined ere long; and man meddle not with me: I have her and will hold her.
Besides, I seemed to hold two lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.
All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.
Come, Miss Jane, don't cry,' said Bessie, as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, 'Don't burn!' but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey?
Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry...
