59 quotes
I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line.
Shirley (1849)
Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller significance — what I have always said in theory — Wait God's will.
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.
God did not give me my life to throw away.
Jane Eyre (1847)
Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the horn-book, turning silk dresses and making children’s frocks.
Villette (1855)
Concealing the mad-woman's neighbourhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near an upas-tree: that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always was.
Life, believe, is not a dream,
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day!
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends!
It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.
Villette (1853)
What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me.
Jane Eyre (1847)
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.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I can but die... and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence.
Jane Eyre (1847)
Against slavery all right thinkers revolt, and though torture be the price of resistance, torture must be dared: though the only road to freedom lie through the gates of death, those gates must be passed; for freedom is indispensable.
The Professor (1857)
It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in 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.
Jane Eyre (1847)
I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure — an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?
Jane Eyre (1847)