All quotes

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.

Chide me when I do anything that is not well, but then make haste to tell me that you have forgiven me, and that you are what I shall ever be, a faithful friend.

I shall never be persuaded that marriage has a charm to raise love out of nothing, much less out of dislike

If you love me you will; and if you do not, I shall never love myself.

If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

Whats'ever 'appens to you--whats'ever--you'd be a princess all the same--an' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different.

At the beginning I was only a little mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them.

Methinks, if I loved him more, I should keep him--I should keep myself rather--at a more respectful distance.

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will fall off.

There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.

Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life

I’m not a bit changed--not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me--back here--is just the same.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

We say so because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it.