Parenting

100+ Jane Eyre Quotes That Will Make You Believe In Love Again

by Team Scary Mommy

Updated: March 5, 2021

Originally Published: November 13, 2019

Culture Club/Getty

Let’s be honest: Jane Eyre can be difficult to wade through for the cheery among us, because dang does that woman have a crappy life. But then it becomes this Gothic tragic romance complete with jealousy, forbidden love, possible hauntings, and a hidden spouse. For all her misfortunes though, Jane remains shockingly clear-headed and practical throughout Charlotte Bronte’s famous novel. She manages to drop some major truth bombs, and between her and Mr. Rochester create some of the most beautiful prose ever written.

So if you haven’t read Jane Eyre, these quotes below may inspire you to pick up a copy. And if you have, this will take you all the way back to your high school English lit class. The point is, this Bronte book’s a classic, but if this isn’t your cup of tea, we get it. These quotes alone are enough to show you the book’s beauty and charm. We’ve collected over 100 of the best Jane Eyre quotes to pore over on a dark and stormy night.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
“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 care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
“I do not think, sir, you have any 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.”
“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, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
“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.”
“I am not an angel, and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me – for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. 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.”
“Reader, I married him.”
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
“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 revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”
“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”
“All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”
“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”
“I have little left in myself – I must have you. The world may laugh – may call me absurd, selfish – but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.”
“I ask you to pass through life at my side – to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
“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. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, – you’d forget me.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”
“It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.”

“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 … If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”
“You — you strange — you almost unearthly thing! — I love as my own flesh. You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
“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.”
“Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still.”
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.”
“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest – blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.”
“It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”
“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world.”
“I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered – and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”
“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- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. “
“No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”
“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!”
“It is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer.”
“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.”
“I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract: I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him.I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered: – and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
“I loved him very much – more than I could trust myself to say – more than words had power to express.”
“And it is you, spirit – with will and energy, and virtue and purity–that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.”
“I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
“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 liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.”
“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”
“You, Jane, I must have you for my own – entirely my own.”
“We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result.”
“I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.” RELATED: These Cheeky And Memorable ‘Sex And The City’ Quotes Will Carrie You Away
“I am paving hell with energy… I am laying down good intentions which I believe durable as flint.”
“No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like the world when the deluge was gone by.”
“I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.”
“A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.”
“Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life – if ever I thought a good thought – if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer – if ever I wished a righteous wish – I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.”
“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.”
“What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value-to press my lips to what I love-to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.”
“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts — when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break — at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent — I am ever tender and true.”
“To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”
“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart.”
“What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?”
“You are no ruin sir – no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.”
“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”
“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?”
“It is a very strange sensation to inexperience youth to feel itself quite alone the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone.”
“Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.”
“Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.”
“The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.”
“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.”
“It is always the way of events in this life,…no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
“I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment: but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder–how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter in which I had any cause to take vital interest.”
“You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.”
“I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.”
“A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”
“Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence – you will vanish

e’re I inhale your fragrance.”

“You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel; I am bound to you by a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely; a fervant, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
“Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
“You are human and fallible.”
“It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience.”
“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.”
“I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard… And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?”
“I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together.”
“You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream.”
“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?”
“It does no good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and if discovered and responded to, must lead into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.”
“Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.”
“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.”
“Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.”
“Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.”
“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.”
“Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling-he shed it over me now.”
“You are no ruin sir – no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.”
“You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.”
“I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,–a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.”
“I soon forgot storm in music.”
“Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.”
“I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade – the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.”
“I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.”

This article was originally published on November 13, 2019