Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet. She was born on 21 April 1816 and died on 31 March 1855. Her best known novel is Jane Eyre.
Following is the list of Jane Eyre quotes that I am sure you would love to read. Some of these are pretty long than usual, but believe me you will enjoy and appreciate each and every word .
My personal favorite is:
“Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present.”
Jane Eyre Quotes by Charlotte Bronte
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”
“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 strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.”
“The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it.” Jane Eyer Movies
“I can but die…and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence.”
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment.”
“Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.”
“If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should – so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”
“I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
“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.”
“He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol.”
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
“It is in 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.”
“”Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do?” 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. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.”
“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”
“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.”
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
“I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”
“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must – shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you – not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.”
“I am a free human being with an independent will.”
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
“Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”
“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?”
“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.”
“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”
“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!”
“I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
“There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time—the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.”
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.”
“I shook my head: 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.”
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.” Charlotte Bronte Books
“I hold another creed: … it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. … with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.”
“Our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.”
“I knew you would do me good in some way, at some time; – I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not – did not strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies: I have heard of good genii: – there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!”
“I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.”
“I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.”
“We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”
