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.

Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning.

If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.

I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.

The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of the pitcher which I had flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr Rochester at last though it was dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water. 'Is there a flood?' he cried

My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it.