You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.
Charlotte BronteI seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms: you wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Jane?
Charlotte BronteAs to the thoughts, they are elfish. Those eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream.
Charlotte BronteI 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.
Charlotte BronteNo 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. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
Charlotte BronteRochester: "I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchardโฆAnd what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?" Jane: "You are no ruin sir - no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.
Charlotte Bronte