Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte

I reflected. Of course it ought to appear tolerable, I argued
inwardly; but somehow, by some strange fatality, it would not. To live
here, in this close room, the watcher of suffering--sometimes,
perhaps, the butt of temper--through all that was to come of my youth;
while all that was gone had passed, to say the least, not blissfully!
My heart sunk one moment, then it revived; for though I forced myself
to _realise_ evils, I think I was too prosaic to _idealise_,
and consequently to exaggerate them.