All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.
Charlotte BronteRead
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how the presence of God is most felt in nature's grandeur, particularly in the night sky.
Charlotte Bronte expresses the idea that while God's presence is omnipresent, it becomes most palpable to us when we observe the vastness and beauty of the natural world, especially when gazing at the night sky. This experience evokes a deep sense of wonder and appreciation for the divine, revealing qualities like infinity, power, and presence in a tangible manner.
In practice
In a sermon about the beauty of creation, one might quote this to emphasize the divine in nature.
All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.
Rochester: "I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard…And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?" Jane: "You are no ruin sir - no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.
Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.
For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.
But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?-I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.-Where is God? What is God?-My maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him to me.
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.
No emotion, merely as an emotion, is a sin, because we cannot directly control the arising of an emotion in our soul.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
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