It is strange,' pursued he, 'that while I love Rosomond Oliver so wildly-with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and fascinating--I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness, that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.

Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.

I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

If there is one notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriage - I mean marriage in the vulgar, weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment.

To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.

It is a long way off, sir" "From what Jane?" "From England and from Thornfield: and ___" "Well?" "From you, sir