I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, t... - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear."

"Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.""I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you."

"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."

"It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication."