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The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to “burst” with boldness and goodwill into the silent sea of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.

After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love - I have found you. You are my sympathy, my better self, my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely, a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre, my spring of life.

I must be careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough handling.

Mr Rochester is such a smooth operator…I’m blushing on Jane’s behalf 🤭

“Your bride stands between us.”

He rose, and with a stride reached me.

“My bride is here,” he said, again drawing me to him, “because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?”

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

Thank you, Mr Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back to you: and wherever you are is my home — my only home.

And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me, I’m not quite up for it.

I wish I were in a quiet island with only you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from me.

You will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy.

I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

After life’s fitful fever they sleep well.

That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.

I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.

Punt kick

A quiet jolt of recognition that it’s time to be a better version of yourself, sensing that all the strategies that you brought this far are no longer working — that it’s not enough to be cute or nice or righteous or tough — as if you’ve now entered a new phase in the game of life, moving forward with a completely different token.

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.

Maybe some people need things more than others, or hate them more.

In uncertainty I’m certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love.

There’s nothing sadder to me than associates held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.

And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist — or worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realised that what they had wanted was happiness.

There’s more beauty in the truth, even if it’s dreadful beauty.

‘Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth.

But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before.

Maybe later I'll sort it out to hatred. There was no interval from loveliness to horror, you see. I'm confused, confused.

And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting, only the deeply personal and familiar.