Chapter 20 Quotes — Jane Eyre

To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day.

"Sir," I answered, "a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal."

"She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart," said Mason.

I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.

Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes—that was appalling—the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me.

"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered; "and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark."

The night—its silence—its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.

"She bit me," he murmured. "She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her."

Good God! What a cry!

"Help! help! help!" three times rapidly. "Will no one come?" it cried; and then, while the staggering and stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:— "Rochester! Rochester! for God's sake, come!"