jane eyre Flashcards
“You are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us”
“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer — you are like a slave-driver — you are like the Roman emperors!”
“It was in her nature to wound me cruelly.”
“I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there
“You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. “
“We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia;
“She had stood me in the stead of mother,”
“I felt, at times, as if he were my relation, rather than my master,”
“My daughter, flee temptation.”
“Mother, I will.”
“This was wealth indeed!—wealth to the heart!—a mine of pure genial affections. This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating!”
“His presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire.”
“He made me love him without looking at me.”
“So happy, so gratified, did I become with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred
“I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not…strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.
“I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking, – a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.”
“He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature of whom I had made an idol.”
“After which he murmured, “It will atone – it will atone.”
“The trunk, split down the center, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; though the community of vitality was destroyed”
“It shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms – it could not derive warmth from his breast.”
“Reader, I married him.”
“Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature; in his presence I thoroughly lived, and he lived in mine.”
“I recognized his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty, his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake”
“He was young – perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty – tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline; quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin”
“I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart… kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant and courageous, very gentle, and very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself - I can trust you unreservedly”
“He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an iceberg.”
“You – you strange, you almost unearthly thing! – I love as my own flesh. You – poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are – I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal but mental endowments they have given you; you are formed for labor, not love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine; I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.”
“Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still.”
“Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself forever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity.”
“If I were to marry, you would kill me. You are killing me now.”
“This was a demoniac laugh – low, suppressed, and deep – utter, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber-door.”
“Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapor, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.”
“She bit me,” he murmured. “She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her.”
“She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason.
“Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?…Of the foul German spectre – the Vampyre.
“She took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass.”
‘Clothed hyena’
‘Snarling, snatching sound’
‘Maniac’
‘Lunatic’
‘Like a tigress’
“I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her.”
“her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger”
“coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile”
“the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper”
As he came down the great stair-case at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash – all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt…He is now helpless, indeed – blind and a cripple.
“They were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs.”
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel”
“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and, perhaps, imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper;
“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.
“Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man — you forget that: I am not long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate.”
“He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse”
“I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.”
“I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die; I will be myself, Mr. Rochester”
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
“I scorn your idea of love. I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it”
“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
“folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand,”
“How is he my master? Am I a servant?”
“no jail was ever more secure.”
“She might as well have said to the fire, “Don’t burn!”
“my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I had ever felt.”
“aromatic wine.” (euphoric, inebriated feeling), “after-flavor, metallic and corroding” (regret)
“Burns obeyed… I wondered at her silence.”
“it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your duty to be required to bear.”
“Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes.”
“God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward”
“You may indeed feed their vie bodies, but you think little of how you starve their immortal souls!”
“Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature.”
“Who would think the evil one had already found a servant and agent in her?… This girl is - a liar!”
“It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit.”
“If others don’t love me, I would rather die than live.”
“God is my father, God is my friend. I love him, I believe he loves me.”
“I’ll stay with you dear Helen, no one shall take me away.”
“Resurgam.”
‘Detestable and the rest ridiculous, and all incubi!’
‘Your bride stands between us’
‘we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!’
‘Do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God’
‘You are like a restless bird in a cage.’
“Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice.”
‘Neophyte’s respect and submission to his hierophant’
“People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!
“I am glad you are no relation of mine… I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”
