Jamie The Obscure

I suppose I should explain what I'm doing here. I love to read and while I'm reading I like to highlight quotes and passages that strike me. I've put the ones I've done on my myspace blog, but since I've got this one, that one is defunct. So, I'm transferring the old ones over and I've got some new ones to add later. I hope you enjoy them!

A brilliantly written, yet different love story. Charlotte Bronte took the classic tales of love and devotion and put her own twist on them, which was quite controversial for the time. I feel that this story has become a classic because people can relate to it better than the tales of the rich and powerful courting one another. It's refreshing to think that you can be obscure and plain, and still find love and happiness, even if it sometimes comes at a high price. This novel delves into the depths of the human heart and how far it will go to attain and preserve a true love. It's very romantic without all of the cliches. Miss Bronte showed the world that it is possible to obtain a dream without compromising yourself or your values. Jane's road was a hard and difficult one, but her reward was the greater for it.

"Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone's favour?" (Jane as a child, wondering why her family could not, would not, love her no matter what she did to try to please them.)



"I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfill every duty; I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night." (Jane as a child, still on the theme of being downtrodden by her wealthy relations.)



"'Unjust!-Unjust!' said my reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into precocious though transitory power; and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression-as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die." (Jane as a child after sticking up for herself for the first time.)



"I was discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment." (Jane as a child on the theme of being mistreated by her family. I can relate to her plight as I have many times felt like discord in my own life.)



"My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire." (Jane and her quickly dying passion upon being shut up in her dead uncle's bedroom.)



"Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantile Guy Fawkes." (Guy Fawkes was a English soldier and Roman Catholic who attempted to carry out the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I. Mrs Reed's maid gave Jane too much credit.)



"...human being must love something, and in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow," (Jane in finding solace in her doll.)



"Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine." (Nice quote. In the hardest times, there is always a light.)



"'Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they do not see it- her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present.'" (Jane on Helen Burns, her first friend.)



"...it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear." (Helen to Jane.)



"'But I feel this, Helen: I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.' " (Jane to Helen.)



" 'Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies: when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain...' " (Helen to Jane after being reprimanded.)



"Such is the imperfect nature of man! such are spots on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb." (Jane's thoughts on Miss Scatcherd toward Helen. And how true this is of most of us.)



" 'If all the world hated you, and believe you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.' " (Helen to Jane.)



" 'Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness- to glory?' " (Helen to Jane. Trusting to God to reward her in happiness, after the toils of a mortal life.)



"Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell..." (Jane about Helen.)



"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 a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me at least a new servitude!" " (Jane, as a teacher, after Miss Temple had left the school.)



"I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils." (Jane beginning her new servitude as a governess.)



" 'After life's fitful fever they sleep well...' " (A quote within the book. Very thought provoking.)



"Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes." (Jane, once again becoming restless.)



"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot." (Jane again on her restlessness. I can relate, being a restless, discontented spirit myself.)



"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a constraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex." (Jane on discontentment.)



"...'Then take my word for it,- I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that- not to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent, I am a trite common-place sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life.' " (Mr Rochester explains himself and his ways.)



"...'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.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane, on her being a good listener.)



" 'You would say, I should have been superior to circumstances: so I should- so I should; but you see I was not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I turned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level.' " (Mr Rochester again explaining himself.)



" 'Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may.' " (Mr Rochester's making excuses to be a most determined scoundrel.)



"...'at this moment, I am paving hell with energy.' " (Mr Rochester and his good intentions.)



"...'I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.' " (Mr Rochester's view of Jane.)



" 'Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady: passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistress to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you!' " (Mr Rochester again on Jane being a good listener.)



" 'I knew," he continued, "you would do me good in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii:- there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!' " (Mr Rochester to Jane after she saved him from being burnt in bed.)



"Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened my hope, bore my spirit, triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy,-a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned." (Jane's thoughts after the eventful night.)



"When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense." (Jane, the day after the fateful night of saving Mr Rochester, deciding it is not her place to harbour thoughts of him.)



"That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar." (Jane on her love for Mr Rochester)



"...and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening spontaneous combustion." (The cook's frame of mind before a large party is to be assembled at Thornfield.)



"No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face: I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,- a precious, yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless." (Jane on Mr Rochester)



"Most true it is that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master's colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,- all energy, decisions, will,-were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me: they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me,-that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him: the reader knows I have wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me." (Jane, not being able to help herself, is quite in love with Mr Rochester by this time.)



" 'He is not to them what he is to me,' I thought: 'he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine;-I am sure he is,-I feel akin to him,-I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have, gathers impulsively round 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." (Jane on Mr Rochester. Drawing parallels between him and his guests, and also in relationship to herself.)



"I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons; because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point-this was where the nerve was touched and teased-this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.

If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her-acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration- the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester; to witness their repeated failure, herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched, hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure-to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart-have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face: or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won." (Jane on Miss Ingram's failed attempts to woo Mr Rochester.)



" 'They generally run on the same theme-courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe-marriage.' " (Jane to the gypsy who has come to read her fortune. I thought this rather funny.)



" 'The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it will not suffer farther scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,-to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable.

As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious.

I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow professes to say,-'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.' The forehead declares, 'Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.' " (The gypsy to Jane. Jane soon learns that the old woman is not a gypsy at all, nor an old woman, but Mr Rochester.)



" 'Sir,' I answered, 'a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend, and solace to heal.' " (Jane to Mr Rochester.)



" 'You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!' he growled. 'At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I've a use for it.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane before she leaves for Gateshead Hall to visit her sick aunt. She has said she will advertise for a new position before he marries Miss Ingram, and he is not at all happy about that process.)



" 'It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.' " (Jane to Mr Rochester)



"It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart-a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation-to see the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished." (Jane on her return to Gateshead Hall and her return to the family that had shunned her years before.)



"...'a loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty.' " (Jane's thoughts on Mr Rochester)



" 'Thank you Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home-my only home.' " (Jane's first admission to Mr Rochester that she has more than a reverential severant's feelings towards him.)



"...there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort." (Jane on her return to Thornfield)



"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." (Jane's thoughts while walking in the gardens with Mr Rochester.)



" 'Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?'

I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was full.

'Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you-especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communication will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane, after he tells her he has found her a new position in Ireland.)



"The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway; and asserting a right to predominate: to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes-and to speak.

'I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:-I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,-momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communication with what is bright and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in,-with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.' " (Jane to Mr Rochester after learning she has to leave Thornfield and himself.)



" 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation?-a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? 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! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, or 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!' " (Jane to Mr Rochester)



" 'And your will shall decide your destiny.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane after she exerts her will to leave him.)



" 'My bride is here,' he said, again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my likeness.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane)



"...'You-you strange- you almost unearthly thing!- I love as my own flesh. You- poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are- I entreat to accept me as a husband.' " (Mr Rochester proposes to Jane, which Jane cannot quite believe.)



" '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.' " (Mr Rochester makes Jane believe that it is true.)



" 'Make my happiness- I will make yours.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane.)



" '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 resolve? It will expiate at God's tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgment--I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion--I defy it.' " (Mr Rochester about Jane)



"The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart." (Jane, the day after becoming engaged to Mr Rochester)



" '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, tiviality, 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 on the differences in women.)



" 'Station! station!--your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane)



"My love has sworn, with sealing kiss,

With me to live--to die;

I have at last my nameless bliss:

As I love--loved am I!" (Part of Mr Rochester's song to Jane)



"He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my service were 'provoking puppet,' 'malicious elf,' 'sprite,' 'changeling,' etc." (Jane on Mr Rochester, after she had cooled is ardour.)



"Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride--was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale, her prospects were desolate." (Jane after finding out that her marriage to Mr Rochester was not to happen.)



"My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses, that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence destroyed!" (Jane after finding out the truth of the situation.)



" 'If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,' I thought; 'then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heartstrings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him--I cannot leave him.' " (Jane's thoughts after the revelations of her marriage day.)



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



" 'You see now how the case stands--do you not?' he continued. 'After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have found you. You are my sympathy--my better self--my good angel--I am bound to you with a strong attachement. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you--and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.' " (Mr Rochester to Jane.)



" 'Never,' said he, as he ground his teeth, 'never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!' (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) 'I could bend her with my finger and thumb; and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want; not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself, you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will you will elude the grasp like an essence--you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane, come!' " (Mr Rochester on not being able to change Jane's mind.)



" 'Withdraw, then,--I consent--but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your room; think over all I have said, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings--think of me.' He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. 'Oh, Jane! my hope--my love--my life!' broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob." (Mr Rochester to Jane.)



" 'Farewell!' was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, 'Farewell, for ever!' " (Jane's goodbye)



"That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning: I should be gone. He would have me sought for: vainly. he would feel himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided on." (Jane pauses at the door of her love before running away from Thornfield.)



"But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering--and, oh! with agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now--in his room--watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him, and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not too late: I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter--his pride; his redeemer from misery; perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment--far worse than my abandonment--how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrowhead in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it further in. Birds began singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart, and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had injured--wounded--left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes." (Jane, upon leaving Thornfield, struggles with herself on what is morally right.)



"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love." (Jane upon leaving Thornfield and her love.)



"Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness." (Jane's first night after running away, spent upon the marshes.)



"My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom: it bemoanded him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing: and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him." (Jane's first unbroken rest after running away.)



" 'It is hard work to control the workings of inclination, and turn the bent of nature: but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get--when our will strains after a path we may not follow--we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste--and perhaps surer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.' " (St. John to Jane)



"And, reader, you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?--if you do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet." (Jane, on rediscovering Mr Rochester. Though he is blind and lame, her feeling haven't dwindled. They have only grown stronger.)



"There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him: all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine. Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his lineaments softened and warmed." (Jane back with Mr Rochester)



" 'Choose then, sir--her who loves you best.'

' I will at least choose--her I love best.' " (Conversation between Jane and Mr Rochester)



" '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.'

'Because you delight in sacrifice.'

'Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be priviledged 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.' " (Conversation between Jane and Mr Rochester. What do you sacrifice where true love is involved? If it is indeed true love, you sacrifice nothing at all.)