Michael

“He could remember all about it now; the pitiful figure he must have cut; the absurd way in which he had gone and done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world; and had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if he ever did make such a fool of himself. Was he bewitched by those beautiful eyes, that soft, half-open, sighing mouth which lay so close upon his shoulder only yesterday? He could not even shake off the recollection that she had been there; that her arms had been round him, once—if never again. He only caught glimpses of her; he did not understand her altogether. At one time she was so brave, and at another so timid; now so tender, and then so haughty and regal{164} proud. And then he thought over every time he had ever seen her once again, by way of finally forgetting her. He saw her in every dress, in every mood, and did not know which became her best. Even this morning how magnificent she had looked—her eyes flashing out upon him at the idea that, because she had shared his danger yesterday, she had cared for him the least!”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to earth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon and stars, opened a side-door, and went in.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

“Graham’s thoughts of me were not entirely those of
a frozen indifference, after all. I believe in that goodly mansion, his
heart, he kept one little place under the sky-lights where Lucy might
have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the
chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall
where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he
treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where
his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and
equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over
the door of which was written “Lucy’s Room.” I kept a place for him,
too—a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or
compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I
carried it folded in the hollow of my hand yet, released from that hold
and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might
have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette