"What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?"
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
"I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself."
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? 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! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are!"
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
"His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows."
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Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter.
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Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
"I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me."
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Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours, none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces him with authority so resistless to its acquirement.
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Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
We should acknowledge God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible.
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Villette by Charlotte Bronte