Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is one of the most well-known classical novels of all time. It’s full of nuggets of wisdom which come as many Jane Eyre quotes.
It’s a beautiful novel, a fantastic love story, but one that was extremely progressive in its time. Jane Eyre was one of the first novels to feature an independent literary heroine. Jane isn’t a damsel in distress or a characterless love-interest. She’s her own person, one with wit, courage and, most of all, her own powerful desires.
Jane, as well as the novel and its writer, were ahead of their time.
Here’s my list of the best Jane Eyre quotes about life, love, happiness, independence and much more. If you love quotes, you might also want to check out my list of deep Twitter quotes and the best Hemingway quotes.
Table of Contents
- The Best Jane Eyre Quotes
- Jane Eyre Quotes on Happiness
- Jane Eyre Quotes on Love
- Jane Eyre Quotes on Life
- Jane Eyre Quotes on Beauty
- Jane Eyre Quotes on Independence
- Jane Eyre Quotes on Morality
The Best Jane Eyre Quotes
“You are human and fallible.”
“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”
“I ask you to pass through life at my side – to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.“
“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.“
“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 you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.“
“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”
Jane Eyre Quotes on Happiness
“Even for me, life had its gleams of sunshine.”
“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.”
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.“
“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.”
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.“
Jane Eyre Quotes on Love
“Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still.“
“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.”
“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!”
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.“
“I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.“
“I ask you to pass through life at my side — to be my second self and best earthly companion.“
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you.“
“I loved him very much – more than I could trust myself to say – more than words had power to express.“
“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 come 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.”
“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.”
“It is not violence that best overcomes hate–nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.“
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.“
“Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still.“
Jane Eyre Quotes on Life
“Your will shall decide your destiny.”
“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?”
“Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.”
“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it’s expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it’s perils.“
“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.”
“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.”
“It is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer.“
“I thank my Maker, that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”
“What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer–the Future so much brighter?”
“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 claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.“
Jane Eyre Quotes on Beauty
“Most true it is that ‘beauty is in the eye of the gazer.’”
“A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.”
“A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
“You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.”
“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! 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!”
Jane Eyre Quotes on 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,’ I asserted; ‘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 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.”
“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 desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.”
“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.”
“I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.”
Jane Eyre Quotes on Morality
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.”
“Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
“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“