When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were – large, brilliant, and black.
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 had nor could have sympathy with anything in me...
Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.
A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.
Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.
I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night. I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye.
Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!
To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.
To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.
After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you.
I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal – as we are!
You, Jane, I must have you for my own – entirely my own.
Alas! never had I loved him so well!
Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of life, but the desire of his eyes.
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?
Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.
I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest – blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.
And it is you, spirit – with will and energy, and virtue and purity – that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.