Jane Eyre An Autobiography

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.” “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.””I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” “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.” “If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.” There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, inthe leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when therewas no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre,and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to mewas the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heartsaddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of myphysical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in thedrawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her(for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensedfrom joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at adistance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation,that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlikedisposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner–something lighter, franker, morenatural, as it were–she really must exclude me from privileges intended only forcontented, happy, little children.””What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.”Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding ina child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you canspeak pleasantly, remain silent.”A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained abookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one storedwith pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged,like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in doubleretirement.Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clearpanes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. Atintervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winterafternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn andstorm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentableblast.I returned to my book–Bewick’s History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I caredlittle for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as Iwas, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of seafowl;of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the coast ofNorway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to theNorth Cape