Priya’s Reviews > Jane Eyre > Status Update

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.

“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.