"I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: 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."
"My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something: trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive."
"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye."
"And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame."
"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last."
"I do not think, sir, you have any 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."