Motivational quotes

A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.

Jane describes the mixture of excitement and restlessness on the night before beginning a new life at Thornfield.

My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now 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 courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.

After Miss Temple leaves Lowood, Jane recognizes a wider world of possibility beyond the life she knows.

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.

Jane reflects on the human need for meaningful activity while feeling confined in her governess’s routine.

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.

Jane challenges the expectation that women should suppress their abilities and desire for meaningful activity.

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!

Jane insists to Rochester that poverty, appearance, and social position do not diminish her emotional life or human equality.

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.

Jane asks Rochester to love her as an imperfect human being instead of expecting her to be an angel.

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

Jane resolves to preserve her self-respect while deciding to leave a relationship that conflicts with her principles.

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.

Alone on the moor after leaving Thornfield, Jane finds a temporary sense of welcome in the natural world.

But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them.

Jane acknowledges her uncomfortable feelings about her new teaching post and resolves to improve without despising herself.

I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I will be happy.

Jane asserts her right to enjoy her newly found family despite St. John’s disapproval of domestic contentment.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear; and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

The frontispiece of the book. Reprinted worldwide, usually anonymously, as the Optimist Creed; this is where it comes from and who wrote it.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.