All quotes

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will

To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

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.

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

This was wealth indeed!—wealth to the heart!—a mine of pure, genial affections.

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.

I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight.

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!

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.

I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils.

Jane, I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters—without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.

You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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