Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. “She has been unkind to you, no doubt because you see, she dislikes your cast of character … but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Reed, which I cannot do I should bless her son John, which is impossible.” “Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.” “Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.” “It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.” “Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilized nations disown it.” It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.” “But I feel this, Helen I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me I must resist those who punish me unjustly.

“You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.” When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard I am sure we should – so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.” “If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse.

In this exchange, Helen Burns, a sickly student who is nonetheless cheerful, befriends Jane and earnestly instructs her let go of her anger. Reed has been cruel and unjust toward Jane, and Jane in return is full of smoldering resentment toward her aunt. Reed can no longer abide her rebellious behavior.

Jane Eyre, the protagonist of the Charlotte Brontë novel with the same name, is sent to Lowood School because her aunt and benefactress Mrs.

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë