Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance - a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage - forget it.

There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.

I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.

I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman.

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, triviality, 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 to Jane)

And with that answer, he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down.