Jane Eyre quotes

Reader, I married him.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIII

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIII

Still indomitable was the reply—“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

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.

After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXVII

I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow professes to say,—‘I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XIX

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter VI

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXVII

“I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIII

I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIII

You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXVII

I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him—he stood at the foot of the stairs.

This was very pleasant; there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXVII

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.

I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIV