"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 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."

"You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own."

". . . they would neither hate nor envy us if they did not deem us so much happier than themselves."

"As far as my experience of matrimony goes -- I think it tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself."

"Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror-glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids swollen and purple. On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me - my heart seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why and for whom I despaired."

"I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me."

"And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature."

"They outnumbered me, and I was worsted and under their feet; but, as yet, I was not dead."

"Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight. It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept, are seen by me ascending from the clods--haloed most of them--but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, resealed in monuments."

"Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means."

"Jane, I never meant to wound you thus...Will you ever forgive me?"Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot."

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

"I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs."

"I smiled: I thought to myself, Mr. Rochester is peculiar—he seems to forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders." "The smile is very well," said he, catching instantly the passing expression; "but speak on." "I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders."

"His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows."

"Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence."

"I wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast."

"So you shun me? - you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, that your heart has been weeping blood?"

"Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.""How do you know? -- how can you guess all this, sir?""I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary."

"I laughed at him as he said this. "I am not an angel, I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me-for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate."

"It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not 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; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication."

"My spirit is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven."

"Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand-when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find-all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart."

"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."

"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."

"Some have won a wild delight,By daring wilder sorrow;Could I gain thy love to-night,I'd hazard death to-morrow."

"Jane: Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life-if ever I thought a good thought-if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer-if ever I wished a righteous wish-I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.Mr. Rochester: Because you delight in sacrifice.Jane: Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value-to press my lips to what I love-to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."

"No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, 'I am baffled!' and submits to be floated passively back to land."

"Who has words at the right moment?"

"I sought her eye, desirous to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in vain for a glimpse of soul. I am no Oriental; white necks, carmine lips and cheeks, clusters of bright curls, do not suffice for me without that Promethean spark which will live after the roses and lilies are faded, the burnished hair grown grey. In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life--November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect."

"Mr Brocklehurst: Do you know where the wicked go after death?Jane Eyre: They go to hell, was my ready and orthodox answer.. . . Mr: What must you do to avoid it? Jane: [Thinking] I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come was objectionable: " I must keep in good health , and not die."

"In her past were sweet passages, in her future rosy hopes."

"Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation."