Quotes (Jane Eyre)

Quotes from novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

This section includes Key quotes from novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense.” John Reed (Chapter 1).

"Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent." Mrs Reed (Chapter 1).

“I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 2).

“I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 3).

"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants." Mr Brocklehurst (Chapter 4).

“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.” Helen (Chapter 6).

"I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing." Jane Eyre (Chapter 10).

"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth." Jane Eyre (Chapter 11).

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 12).

"I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me." Jane Eyre (Chapter 17).

"Good-night, my -- " He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.”  Jane Eyre (Chapter 17).

“What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not -- I could not -- marry Miss Ingram. You -- you strange, you almost unearthly thing! -- I love as my own flesh. You -- poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are -- I entreat to accept me as a husband." Rochester (Chapter 23).

“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are!” Jane Eyre (Chapter 23).

“And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket -- a jay in borrowed plumes.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 24).

“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 27).

“If you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 29).

“To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like 'sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet'; serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 32).

“I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard,' he remarked ere long. 'And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?” Rochester (Chapter 37).

"I am an independent woman now." Jane Eyre (Chapter 37).

"'That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged -- that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words -- 'Jane! Jane! Jane!” Rochester (Chapter 37).

“Reader, I married him.” Jane Eyre (Chapter 38).