1. “It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him: I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far: beyond the verge or provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear of uneasy restraint: this suited both him and me.”
2. “You are human and fallible.”
3. “appearance should not be mistaken for truth”
4. “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.”
5. “I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.”
6. “Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”
7. “But you know very well you are thinking of another they, and that he is not thinking of you”
8. “He made me love him without looking at me.”
9. “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.”
10. “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. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you–and you may mark my words–you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current- -as I am now.”
11. “You, Jane, I must have you for my own – entirely my own.”
12. “Genius is said to be self-conscious. ”
13. “Everything in life seems unreal.”
14. “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.”
15. “That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.”
16. “There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came; and sentiments growing there, fresh and sheltered, which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife—at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—this would be unendurable.”
17. 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.”
18. “Unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.”
19. “A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
20. “No—you men never do consider economy and common sense.”
21. “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.”
22. “If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening.”
23. “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
24. “No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”
25. “I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
26. “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
27. “Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. 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.”
28. “I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.”
29. “You are afraid of me, because I talk like a sphinx.”
30. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
31. “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. ”
32. “…his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire.”
33. “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”
34. “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.”
35. “I Believe she thought I had forgotten my station; and yours, sir.’
‘Station! Station!– your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.”
36. “Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
37. “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”
38. “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.”
39. “Even for me, life had its gleams of sunshine.”
40. “I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you”
41. “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.”
42. “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.”
43. “Reader, I married him.”
44. “Beauty is in the eye of the gazer.”
45. “I desired more…than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn’t help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
46. “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.”
47. “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.”
48. “I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”
49. “It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”
50. “Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?” “Yes; to my long home—my last home.”
51. “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.”
52. “Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary.”
53. “Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.”
54. “What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?”
55. “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.”
56. “It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”
57. “she is in a world of private dreams , not here with us !”
58. “To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.”
59. “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.”
60. “To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”
61. “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.”
62. “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.”
63. “I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered – and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
64. “A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play.”
65. “I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.”
66. “I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.”
67. “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.”
68. “my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. ”
69. “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.”
70. “It agitates me that the skyline there is forever our limit, I long for the power of unlimited vision…If I could behold all I imagine.”
71. “A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor penciled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.”
72. “And it is you, spirit – with will and energy, and virtue and purity–that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.”
73. “Where did you get your copies?”
“Out of my head.”
“That head I see now on your shoulders?”
“Yes, sir.”
74. “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.”
75. “…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…”
76. “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, too 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.”
77. “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.”
78. “Oh! That gentleness! How far more potent is it than force!”
79. “‘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.’”
80. “The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.”
81. “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.”
82. “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.”
83. “Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still.”
84. “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!”
85. “Your will shall decide your destiny.”
86. “He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down”
87. “’I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘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.’”
88. “You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.”
89. “Make my happiness–I will make yours.”
90. “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.”
91. “I loved him very much – more than I could trust myself to say – more than words had power to express.”
92. “And I am a hard woman, -impossible to put off.”
93. “I ask you to pass through life at my side – to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
94. “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.”
95. “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.”
96. “I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I’d take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you’d forget me.”
97. “Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell.”
98. “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”
99. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
100. “God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”
101. “You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to read.” But”
102. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
103. “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.”
104. “there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”
105. “I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much.”
106. “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.”
107. “Good-night, my-” He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.”
108. “It is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer.”
109. “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.”
110. “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
111. “He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw.”
112. “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.”
113. “Remorse is the poison of life.”
114. “My heart is mute–my heart is mute”
115. “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?”
116. “My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it.”
117. “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.”
