atseventeen

[atseventeen]

‘“I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even 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!”’

—“Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë

[atseventeen]

‘“I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered: - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”’

—“Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë

[atseventeen]

‘I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.’

—“Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë

[atseventeen]

‘Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.’

—“Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë

[atseventeen]

‘“How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant - it would be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows where?”’

—“Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë

[atseventeen]

‘“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world[…]”’

— “Jane Eyre”, Charlotte Brontë.

[atseventeen]

Divine photographed by Andy Warhol, 1978.