Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre Quotes

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

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

Conventionality is not morality.

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

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.

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 it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.

You are human and fallible.

Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.

Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.

Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation.

Your will shall decide your destiny.

Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.

Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.

I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much.

Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.

Unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.

Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.

You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.

Make my happiness--I will make yours.

I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy." Mr. Rochester

[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing.

the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.

How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.

She bit me. She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her...She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart." Richard mason

You would say you don't see it: at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-by, what you express with that organ, I am quick at interpreting its language).

... your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me...

Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library.  This book I had again and again perused with delight.

I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre.

Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear.

Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness – to glory?

I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.

Love me, then, or hate me, as you will, " I said at last, "you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

...would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!

his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.

How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!

Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is around us, for it is everywhere.

Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.

I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure-an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment:is it not?

Jane, I never meant to wound you thus...Will you ever forgive me?"Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.

You have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose then, your heart has been weeping blood?