Do you think that I am a machine? That I can bear it? Do you think because I'm poor, plain, obsure, and little that I have no heart? That I'm without… - Charlotte Brontë

"You examine me, Miss Eyre", said he. "Do you think me handsome?"
I should have deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware: "No, sir."

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

This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring.