Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is—I repeat it—a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.