Jane Eyre is a beloved novel by 19th-century English author Charlotte Brontë. Written from a first-person perspective, the story follows the life of its titular heroine and narrator, starting with her troubled childhood. Orphaned at a young age, Jane is first mistreated by her aunt, the cruel Mrs. Reed, and then sent to the harsh Lowood School for underprivileged girls. Later, she becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets the mysterious Mr. Rochester, and falls in love—hard. Yet, her road to romance and happiness is riddled with obstacles, heartbreak and difficult decisions. Jane is a strong, independent woman who stands up for herself. She refuses to compromise her values or self-respect, even for the man she adores. She also feels deeply. The passionate love story between Jane and Mr. Rochester is key to the book's enduring appeal. Jane Eyre has remained popular over time, inspiring numerous film and television adaptations.
Through Brontë's rich writing, the novel explores important themes such as female empowerment, personal freedom, social injustices, and moral responsibility. Here are 30+ of the most powerful and memorable quotes from Jane Eyre.
The best quotes from Jane Eyre on self-respect and independence
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will."
"'I am not an angel … and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.”
"I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss."
"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."
"Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine."
"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."
“I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearth-stone.”
"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!”
"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.”
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
The best quotes from Jane Eyre on gender roles and inequalities
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel … 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."
“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!"
"Flirting is a woman's trade, one must keep in practice."
“He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak to a man.”
"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."
The best quotes from Jane Eyre society and morality
"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?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
The best quotes from Jane Eyre on love and connection
"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."
“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.”
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear."
"I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion."
“Reader, I married him.”
