Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre

I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.

Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault.

At last both slept: the fire and candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.

Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late!

She might as well have said to the fire, "don't burn!"


"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
"I deliberated for a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: "I must keep in good health, and not die."

"…it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."

"I made no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness."

"When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should--so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again."

I rallied my forces for the worst. It came.

What my sensations were, no language can describe; but just as they all arose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit.

"By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world. I should have been continually at fault."

"Where is God? What is God?"
"My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what he created."

A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.

I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.


"…a present has many faces to it, has it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion on it."

"…you with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is not one liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind; it is an unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but if I did, it would not take harm from me. There more you and I converse, the better, for while I cannot blight you, you may be refresh me."

"I feared the meeting in the morning: now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled that it is grown impatient."

"You," I said, "a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me."

"It does 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…"

Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have, gathers impulsively around him. I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract: I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:--and yet, while I breathe and think I must love him.

"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 to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an 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."

'I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.'

"If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Jane?"
"Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could."

"Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments," he said; "that house is a mere dungeon: don't you feel it so?"
"It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir."
"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered; "and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here (he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) all is real, sweet, and pure."

"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back to you: and wherever you are is my home-- my only home."

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with a lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil--if evil existent or prospective there was--seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.

"God pardon me!" he subjoined ere long, "and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her."

"It will atone--it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God's tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement--I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion--I defy it."

"Did she think, Janet, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?"

"Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter."

Yet after all, my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol.

"A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; iced glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with trodden snow; and the woods which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway."

"Oh, nevermore could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what had been; for he was not what I had thought him."

"I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go; that I perceived well."

One idea only still throbbed life-like within me--a remembrance of God: it begot a muttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered; but no energy was found to express them:--
"Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help."

That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, "the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overwhelmed me."

"…that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it."
But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it; and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron, he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
"Let me be torn away, then!" I cried. "Let another help me!"
"No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall."

"Great God!--what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?"


"I am my own mistress."


"No--no--Jane; you must not go. No--I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence--the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself--I must have you. The world may laugh--may call me absurd, selfish--but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied: or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame."

"Am I hideous, Jane?"
"Very, sir: you always were, you know."
"Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you sojourned."

"All the sunshine I can feel is in her presence."

(Aside.) "Damn him!"--(To me.) "Did you like him, Jane?"
"Yes, Mr. Rochester, I like him: but you asked me that before."
I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealously had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore, immediately charm the snake.
"Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?" was the next somewhat unexpected observation.

"Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?"
"Because I am comfortable there."


"You are no ruin, sir--no lightning struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop."

"Choose then, sir--her who loves you best."
"I will at least choose--her I love best."

"Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed guilt onto its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever."

"As I exclaimed 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice--I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was--replied, 'I am coming: wait for me,' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind, the words--'Where are you?'"

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.

To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.

When his firstborn was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were--large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God has tempered judgment with mercy.

"My Master," he says, "has forewarned me. Daily he announces more distinctly,--'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly respond,--'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'"