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)