1
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.
The complete collection
7 quotes by Charlotte Bronte · clear filters
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.
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.
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!
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 care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will
© 2026 Just Brands, LLC