Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” Quotes (179 Quotes)

Beauty is in the eye of the gazer.

Flirting is a woman's trade, one must keep in practice.

I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms; my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect; it seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner--to join in the same enterprise.

I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution -- such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight -- to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood -- no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet -- That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength.

I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.

I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened my hope, bore my spirit, triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy,--a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium; judgment would warn passion

It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry…

Signs may be but the sympathies of nature with man.

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

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

A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.

Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.

I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.

I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot of contamination must be an exquisite treasure-an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?

I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of the gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you

Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!

Sir, your wife is living; that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress; to say otherwise is sophistical -- is false.

Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream

A child cannot quarrel with it's elders, as I had done-cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine-without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction.

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; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to gaurd us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence, and God waits ony a speration of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.

Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.

I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest.

I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked.

I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations.

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!

It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: 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.

Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!

So you shun me? - you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, that your heart has been weeping blood?

What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling like, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined!

Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you.

A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly.

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.

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 agised 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.

I am paving hell with energy... I am laying down good intentions which I believe durable as flint.

I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all around her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.

I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.

If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity.

Life, however, was yet in my possession; with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried, and want provided for, the suffering endured, the responsibility fulfilled.

On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.

Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.

What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?

Your will shall decide your destiny.

A little roving, solitary thing.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Jane.