1. “A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”
2. "And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader. Gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults-- indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every discription. In my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody to... But I beleived that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their sourse in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principals, and purer tastes than such circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destany encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they were hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I greive for his greif, whatever it was, and would have given much to assuage it."
3. "At last, however, a pale light falls on the page from the window: she looks, the moon is up; she closes the volume, rises, and walks through the room. Her book has perhaps been a good one; it has refreshed, refilled, rewarmed her heart; it has set her brain astir, furnished her mind with pictures. The still parlour, the clean hearth, the window opening on the twilight sky, and showing its 'sweet regent', new throned and glorious, suffice to make earth an Eden, life a poem, for Shirley. A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins; unmingled--untroubled; not to be reached or ravished by human agency, because by no human agency bestowed: the pure gift of God to His creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her experience of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence angels looked down on the dreamer of Beth-el, and her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it. No--not as she wishes it; she has not time to wish: the swift glory spreads out, sweeping and kindling, and multiplies its splendours faster than Thought can effect his combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter her longings. Shirley says nothing while the trance is upon her--she is quite mute."
4. "But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame."
5. “Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.”
6. “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
7. "Devoid of charm, how could I hope
My unasked love would e'er return? What fate, what influence lit the fire the flame I still feel inly, deeply burn?"
8. ”Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
9. "I am no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will."
10. “I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.”
11. "If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments; or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit: she would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of Acquisitiveness in her head--a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and most ignorant, for she does not know her dreams are rare--her feelings peculiar: she does not know, has never known, and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green."
12. “If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.”
13. “If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.”
14. “"'I knew,' he continued,'you would do me good in some way, at sometime;-- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not-- (again he stopped)-- did not (he proceded hastily) strick delight to my innermost heart for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii-- there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good night!' Strange energy was in his voice; strange fire in his look."”
15. “I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.”
16. "I now assume my own thoughts; my mind relaxes from the stretch on which it has been for the last twelve hours, and falls back onto the rest which nobody in this house knows of but myself. I now, after a day of weary wandering, return to the ark which for me floats alone on the billows of this world's desolate and boundless deluge"
17. "It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
18. "I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward."
19. “Life, believe, is not a dream,
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day!”
20. “Look into thought and say what dost though see
Dive, be not fearful how dark the waves flow
Sink through the surge and bring pearls up to me
Deeper aye deeper, the fairest lie low
I have dived I have sought them but none have I found
In the gloom that closed over me no[ne] flowed by
As I sunk through the void depths so black and profound
How dim died the sun and how far hung the sky
Thoughts were untroubled and dreams were asleep
The spirit lay dreadless and hopeless beneath.”
21. "Look twice before you leap."
22. "'No, Jane,' he returned: 'what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer--the Future so much brighter?'"
23. "No mockery in the world ever sounds to me as hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness … Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure."
24. "Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks."
25. “Reader, I married him.”
26. “Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.”
27. “"Tell me, now, fairy as you are, - can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
"It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added,"a loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty." Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the presnt instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling-he shed it over me now."”
28. "The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master- something that at time strangely wills and works for itself."
29. “We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought,
And where none shall dare restarin us
We can meet again, in thought.”
30. "...We must change, for the eye is tired of the picture so oft recurring..."
31. “Who has words at the right moment?”
32. "You never felt jealousy, did you Miss Eyre? Of course not:I need not ask you: because you never felt love. You have sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall wake it."
