All quotes

Not from space must I seek my dignity, but from the ruling of my thought.

The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not, as we feel in a thousand instances.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind.

Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.

You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.

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.

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!

I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Fear proceeds from the same things when absent which occasion grief when present.

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

You will fail at some point in your life. Accept it. You will lose. You will embarrass yourself. You will suck at something. There is no doubt about it.

If you love me you will; and if you do not, I shall never love myself.

Love is a terrible word, and I should blush to death if anything but a letter accused me on't.

but to have the spleen, and to dream upon't, is a punishment I would not wish my greatest enemy

Always remember what is your own, and what belongs to another; and you will not be disturbed.

Does it seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good and happy?

If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault; for God has made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations.

If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he be anxious?

It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are.

It is not possible that what is by nature free can be disturbed by anything else, or hindered by any other thing than by itself.

Most of us are afraid of mortification of the body, and would contrive all means to avoid such a thing, but we care not about the soul’s mortification.