I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society—be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
He says this after one of the most awkward, humiliating social calls imaginable. The line reads like bravado—he’s nursing hurt pride and pretending it’s a worldview. His neat aphorism ignores how people in the novel actually work: isolation warps them. His “cure” is really avoidance, not wisdom. The novel keeps proving him wrong, scene by scene. Brontë uses him to poke at polite clichés that shatter under real experience.