Jane Eyre

Famous quotes

• Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

  preface to the 2nd edition (21 December 1847)In context

  • Morality
  • Religion

• Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.

  PrefaceIn context

  • Morality
  • Religion

• There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

  Chapter IIn context

• I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last

  Chapter VIIn context

  • Forgiveness

• If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

  Ch. 8 (Helen Burns)In context

  • Morality

• 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.

  Ch. 12In context

  • Happiness

• 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.

  Chapter XIIIn context

  • Freedom
  • Women

• 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.

  Chapter XXIIIIn context

  • Love

• 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!

  Chapter XXIIIIn context

  • Love

• 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 to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)In context

  • Freedom

• I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

  Ch. 27In context

  • Character

• I would always rather be happy than dignified

  Chapter XXXIVIn context

  • Happiness
  • Pride

• God did not give me my life to throw away

  Chapter XXXVIn context

  • Life & Death

• Reader, I married him.

  Chapter XXXVIIIIn context

  • Marriage

Contents