“I am no bird; and no net
ensnares me: I am a free human
being with an independent will;
which I now exert to leave you.”
“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without
feelings?"
"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, 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!”
“I have for the first time found what I can truly
love–I have found you. You are my
sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am
bound to you with a strong attachment. 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, wrap
my existence about you–and, kindling in pure,
powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command
me, merely because you are older than I, or because
you have seen more of the world than I have; your
claim to superiority depends on the use you have
made of your time and experience.”
“I had not intended to love him; the reader
knows I had 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, great and strong! He
made me love him without looking at me.”
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and
sickness it would still be dear.”
“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.”
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with
tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if
they cannot find it.”
“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.”
“You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.”