from Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

... I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple -- or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity -- and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone; it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more. My world had, for some years, been Lowood; my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.