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3f5c53b
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It was time to assume ascendency. powers were in-play and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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4b066a1
|
Jane! Mr. Rochester!
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Charlotte Brontë |
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5e9b2f0
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You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, ..
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love
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Charlotte Brontë |
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9794056
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Some have won a wild delight, By daring wilder sorrow; Could I gain thy love to-night, I'd hazard death to-morrow.
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daring
love
poetry
risk
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Charlotte Brontë |
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9c3b594
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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?
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Charlotte Brontë |
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d5de261
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It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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d738f9d
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Now it is not everybody, even amongst our respected friends and esteemed acquaintance, whom we like to have near us, whom we like to watch us, to wait on us, to approach us with the proximity of a nurse to a patient. It is not every friend whose eye is a light in a sickroom, whose presence is there a solace.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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bd0e513
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Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation: that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace: as it was I derived from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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1548ea5
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But as his wife - at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked - forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital - this would be unendurable.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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a6319cc
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You do not know how the people of this country bear malice. It is the boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark at last.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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b053d80
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But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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a971535
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she is in a world of private dreams , not here with us !
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Charlotte Brontë |
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7c98fde
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I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution -- such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight -- to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood -- no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet -- That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I wo..
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Charlotte Brontë |
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acfbe42
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I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blessed.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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520228a
|
One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said--"Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?" I had a gold watch-chain: I answered "Yes." "And have you a pale blue dress on? I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was sure of it."
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romantic
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Charlotte Brontë |
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4472ec9
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Are you in earnest? - Do you truly love me? - Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife?' 'I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it.' 'Then, sir, I will marry you.' 'Edward - my little wife!' 'Dear Edward!' 'Come to me - come to me entirely now,' said he: and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, 'Make my happiness - I will make yours.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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2a5fdc6
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All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not a naturally silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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e28cfe2
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Courage, Lucy Snowe! With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved, by winning that prize, your right to look higher.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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3aba0cf
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Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, "What am I to do?" But the answer my mind gave--"Leave Thornfield at once"--was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. "That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe," I alleged: "that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and..
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Charlotte Brontë |
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fe863d2
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I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?" To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which he will surely one day demand a strict account." --
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Charlotte Brontë |
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1c7982f
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I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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530e835
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It had formerly been my endeavor to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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cdcc701
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I have told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester; I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me--because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would..
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Charlotte Brontë |
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bbfbd3b
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I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades -- stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise: spoke t..
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hell
hope
suspense
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Charlotte Brontë |
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df4b62b
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If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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2eb0e6e
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I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it, and framed an humbler supplication; for change, stimulus; that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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c740736
|
Come to me - come to me entirely now,' said he: and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, 'Make my happiness - I will make yours.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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800671d
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I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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d802bdc
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Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! ... Milton tried to see the first woman; but Cary, he saw her not ... I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus" -- "Pagan that you are! what does that signify?" "I say, there were giants on the earth in those days: giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with..
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empowerment
eve
gender
god
godliness
greatness
independence
nature
self-determination
strength
superiority
titans
women
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Charlotte Brontë |
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479c863
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I verily believe all that is desirable on earth--wealth, reputation, love--will for ever to you be the ripe grapes on the high trellis: you'll look up at them; they will tantalize in you the lust of the eye; but they are out of reach: you have not the address to fetch a ladder, and you'll go away calling them sour.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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faf3240
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But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes-indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on the flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing..
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Charlotte Brontë |
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ab32063
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the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.
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horizon
jane-eyre
sky
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Charlotte Brontë |
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b3270f3
|
Happiness is the cure--a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both." No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure."
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Charlotte Brontë |
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fd406bc
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Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps not hour, the waiting waters will stir; in shape, though perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for which it bled, the healing herald will descend.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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e23bb87
|
Now I wept: Helen Burns was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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dd03a79
|
Do you think me, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless?
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inspirational
social-class
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Charlotte Brontë |
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e78e597
|
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong -- I have as much soul as you, -- and full as much heart.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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86a1589
|
His veins were dark with a vivid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy.
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jealousy
villette
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Charlotte Brontë |
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64f555c
|
One moment longer," whispered solitude and the summer moon, "stay with us: all is truly quiet now; for another quarter of an hour your presence will not be missed: the day's heat and bustle have tired you; enjoy these precious minutes."
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Charlotte Brontë |
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5aefefa
|
You examine me, Miss Eyre", said he. "Do you think me handsome?" I should have deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware: "No, sir."
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jane-eyre
jane-is-a-savage
mr-rochester
oh-snap
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Charlotte Brontë |
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bb7bab1
|
He fumed like a bottled storm.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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b424b22
|
I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me.
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reality
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Charlotte Brontë |
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0e83800
|
I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.
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Charlotte Brontë |
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7cc4835
|
I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.
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Charlotte Brontë |