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Jane Eyre Quotes

Browse 44 quotes about Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre Quotes

“There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say–'My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.”

RealityImaginationHardshipIdealismJane Eyre
Book:Jane Eyre
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“He did not require beauty or vast intelligence or great wit. Just one woman whose heart and soul seemed to be in communion with his. One woman who would look into his hear and see who he really was. One woman who would truly love him. He kept his eyes on this possibility wherever he went, and nowhere , it seemed, was the love that he longed for.”

LoveLongingHeartacheJane EyreEdward Fairfax RochesterEdward RochesterEfrJane Eyre S HusbandReimagined CharacterTara Bradley
Book:Jane Eyre's Husband - The Life of Edward Rochester
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“Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. 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.”

LoveJane Eyre
Book:Jane Eyre
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“I have formed my plans—right plans I deem them—and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if in the cup of bliss offered, but one drew of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and 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.”

PlansSmilesJane Eyre
Book:Jane Eyre
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“I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, "like stalwart soldiers." The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.”

EncouragementHeroesTeachersJane Eyre
Book:Jane Eyre
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“This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger–look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair–soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. 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.”

ConscienceSelf WorthSelf RespectInsecurityJane Eyre
Author:Charlotte Brontë
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“The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land — Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes — and yet I shudder.”

Lost LoveJane Eyre
Author:Charlotte Brontë
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“I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “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!”

FeelingsEmotionsClassicsJane Eyre
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“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. 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, to 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.”

FeminismGender EqualityJane Eyre
Book:Jane Eyre
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“You see now how the case stands — do you not?” he continued. “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. You are my sympathy — my better self — my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. “It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now — opened to you plainly my life of agony — described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence — shown to you, not my RESOLUTION (that word is weak), but my resistless BENT to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane — give it me now.”

LoveBronteJane Eyre
Book:Jane Eyre
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“How different this world to the one about which I used to read, and in which I used to live! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms, vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of things of which I knew nothing are now so familiar that the creatures themselves appear to have real existence. The Arabian Nights are not more fantastic than our gospels; and Lempriere would have found ours a more marvelous world to catalog than the classical mythical to which he devoted his learning. Ours is a world of luprachaun and clurichaune, deev and cloolie, and through the maze of mystery I have to thread my painful way, now learning how to distinguish oufe from pooka, and nis from pixy; study long screeds upon the doings of effreets and dwergers, or decipher the dwaul of delirious monks who have made homunculi from refuse. Waking or sleeping, the image of some uncouth form is always present to me. What would I not give for a volume by the once despised 'A. L. O. E' or prosy Emma Worboise? Talk of the troubles of Winifred Bertram or Jane Eyre, what are they to mine? Talented authoresses do not seem to know that however terrible it may be to have as a neighbour a mad woman in a tower, it is much worse to have to live in a kitchen with a crocodile. This elementary fact has escaped the notice of writers of fiction; the re-statement of it has induced me to reconsider my decision as to the most longed-for book; my choice now is the Swiss Family Robinson. In it I have no doubt I should find how to make even the crocodile useful, or how to kill it, which would be still better. ("Mysterious Maisie")”

MonstersFairyFaeOccultFaerieFolkloreCreatureJane EyreCrocodileA L O EEmma Jane WorboiseSwiss Family Robinson
Book:Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others
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“Ma il loro tesoro era rimasto, oro e non soltanto oro. Qualcosa si trova ancora — ma chi la trova non lo dice mai perché, vedi, gliene resterebbe solo un terzo: questa è la legge per chi trova i tesori. Loro vogliono tutto, così non ne parlano. A volte oggetti preziosi, a volte gioielli. È incredibile tutto quello che la gente trova e vende in gran segreto a qualche individuo guardingo che pesa e misura, esita, fa domande che restano senza risposta, poi dà in cambio del denaro. [...]In tutte le isole, da nessuna parte, non si sa da dove. Perché è meglio non parlare di tesoro. Meglio non dirlo. Sì, meglio non dirlo. Non ti dirò che a malapena ascoltavo i tuoi racconti. Desideravo la notte e il buio e l’ora in cui si aprono i fiori lunari. Cancella la luna, tira giù le stelle, Amami al buio, perché il buio è il nostro destino presto, presto. Come gli spavaldi pirati, approfittiamo al massimo di ciò che abbiamo, nel migliore e nel peggiore dei modi. Non dare un terzo ma tutto. Tutto… tutto… tutto. Non tenerti nulla… No, avrei detto… sapevo quello che avrei detto. — Ho fatto un errore terribile. Perdonami. Lo dissi, guardandola, vedendo l’odio nei suoi occhi — e sentendo il mio odio che sprizzava incontro al suo. Di nuovo quel cambiamento da vertigine, l’ossessione del ricordo, lo sconvolgente ritorno all’odio. Mi hanno comprato col tuo sporco denaro, me, hanno comprato. Tu li hai aiutati. Mi hai ingannato, tradito, e farai ancora peggio, se ne avrai la possibilità. [...] … Se ero destinato all’inferno, che sia l’inferno. Basta coi falsi paradisi. Basta con la maledetta magia. Tu mi odi e io ti odio. Vedremo chi sa odiare meglio. Ma prima — prima voglio distruggere il tuo odio. Il mio odio è più freddo, più forte, e tu non avrai più nessun odio che ti scaldi. Tu non avrai più nulla. E lo feci. Vidi l’odio scomparire dai suoi occhi. Lo costrinsi a scomparire. E con l’odio scomparve la sua bellezza. Lei non fu più che un fantasma. Un fantasma nella luce grigia del giorno. Non rimase che la disperazione. Dimmi muori e morirò. Dimmi muori e guardami morire.”

AmoreMorteOdioJane EyreMr RochesterJean RhysIl Grande Mare Dei SargassiPrequel
Book:Wide Sargasso Sea
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“Ero spossato. Tutte le folli passioni contrastanti si erano esaurite e mi avevano lasciato esausto e vuoto. Sano di mente. Ero stanco di quella gente. Detestavo tutto di loro, il riso e le lacrime, l’adulazione e l’invidia, la vanità e gli inganni. E odiavo quel posto. Odiavo le montagne e le colline, i fiumi e la pioggia. Odiavo i suoi tramonti qualunque colore avessero, odiavo la sua bellezza e la sua magia e il segreto che non avrei mai conosciuto. Odiavo la sua indifferenza e la crudeltà che faceva parte del suo incanto. Soprattutto odiavo lei. Perché lei apparteneva a quella magia e a quell’incanto. Mi aveva lasciato assetato e tutta la mia vita sarebbe stata sete e desiderio di ciò che avevo perduto prima ancora di trovarlo.”

Jane EyreJean RhysIl Grande Mare Dei SargassiPrequelCaraibi
Book:Wide Sargasso Sea
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“Christian was not talking at all. He was reading aloud. "I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they had been dead; then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could read, write, and sew a little; then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger, and saying 'She hoped I should be a good child,' dismissed me along with Miss Miller." He was reading Jane Eyre to her!”

StorytellingJane EyreAwwwww MomentsChristian LeighViolet And Christian
Book:The Devil and the Heiress
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“Reader, I married him. It turned out the sounds I heard coming from the attic weren't the screams of Mr Rochester's mad wife Bertha. It wasn't the wife who burned to death in the fire that destroyed Thornfield Hall and blinded my future husband when he tried to save her. After we'd first got engaged, he'd had to admit that he was already married, and we'd broken off our engagement. He'd asked me to run away with him anyway. Naturally, I'd refused. But later, after we were properly married, he insisted that it hadn't happened that way. It turned out there had been no wife. It turned out that it had been a parrot, screaming in the attic. The parrot had belonged to his wife. She had got it in the islands, where she had also contracted the tropical fever that killed her. She'd died long before I came to work for him as a governess. That was never Bertha, in the attic.”

Jane EyreMr RochesterParrot
Book:The Mirror: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him
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“Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts of brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned yet resolute governesses. Or — preferably — the brooding, lowering men were on horseback, black horses with huge muscled haunches, glistening with sweat —”

HumorFantasyScotlandGothic RomanceJane EyreYorkHeathLiterary Allusions
Book:Case Histories
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“How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant–it would be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows where?" And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all around an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood–the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth: and it shuddered at the thought of tottering , and plunging amid that chaos.”

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Book:Jane Eyre
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“Tessa exploded "I am not asking you to maul me in the Whispering Gallery! By the Angel, Will, would you stop being so polite?!" He looked at her in amazement. "But wouldn't you rather-" "I would not rather. I don't want you to be polite! I want you to be Will! I don't want you to indicate points of architectural interest to me as if you were a Baedecker guide! I want you to say dreadfully mad, funny things, and make up songs and be-" The Will I fell in love with, she almost said. "And be Will," she finished instead. "Or I shall strike you with my umbrella." "I am trying to court you," Will said in exasperation. "Court you properly. That's what all this has been about. You know that, don't you?" "Mr. Rochester never courted Jane Eyre," Tessa pointed out. "No, he dressed up as a woman and terrified the poor girl out of her wits. Is that what you want?" "You would make a very ugly woman." "I would not. I would be stunning." Tessa laughed. "There," she said. "There is Will. Isn't that better? Don't you think so?" "I don't know," Will said, eyeing her. I'm afraid to answer that. I've heard that when I speak, it makes American women wish to strike me with umbrellas." Tessa laughed again, and then they were both laughing, their smothered giggles bouncing off the walls of the Whispering Gallery. After that, things were decidedly easier between them, and Will's smile when he helped her down from the carriage on their return home, was bright and real.”

LoveHumorJane EyreWilliam HerondaleCourtingUmbrellasTessa GreyP 522
Book:Clockwork Princess
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