Jane Eyre Favorites

this weekend i'm playing catchup. this summer has been crazy and packed, but things are slowing down. i'll be back, becasue i have a lot that i want to share, but for now i'll leave you with my favorite quotes from jane eyre, my chosen summer reading.

"' Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automatron? ---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, or 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!'"

"'Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law---no man being injured by the breach? For you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me.'

            This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as feeling... 'Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do?'

            Still indomitable was the reply---"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad---as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments when the 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? They have a worth---so I have always believed­­; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane---quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.'"