"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."
— Charlotte Brontë

"He made me love him without looking at me."
— Charlotte Brontë

"But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!"
— Charlotte Brontë (The Letters of Charlotte Bronte)

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs"
— Charlotte Brontë

"If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"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! — 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. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are! (Jane to Mr. Rochester-Ch. 23)"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"...the shadows are as important as the light..."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"'I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: 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 Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë

"Love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the wellbeing of one's companion."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Conventionality is not morality."
— Charlotte Brontë

"The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely."
— Charlotte Brontë

"I'm just going to write because I cannot help it."
— Charlotte Brontë

"I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. 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."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed."
— Charlotte Brontë

"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go to Ireland, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly."
— Charlotte Brontë

"I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame." "
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"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."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"I will keep the law given by God......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............If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ~ Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë

"All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to U; and with U it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever.
(Jane Eyre to Mr. Rochester)

"
— Charlotte Brontë

"There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort."
— Charlotte Brontë

"I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. "
— Charlotte Brontë

"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.
- Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë

"'Do you like him much?'
'I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.'
'Is he?'
'All boys are.'"
— Charlotte Brontë (Villette)

"Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste."
— Charlotte Brontë

"Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me."
— Charlotte Brontë

"Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation."
— Charlotte Brontë

"'I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'

- Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"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.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is – I repeat it – a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"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...If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ~ Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Reader, I married him."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day."
— Charlotte Brontë

"The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent... "
— Charlotte Brontë

"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. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. "
— Charlotte Brontë

"I knew you would do me good in some way, at some time--I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you."
— Charlotte Brontë

""And your will shall decide your destiny," he said: "I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions."

"You play a farce, which I merely laugh at."

"I ask you to pass through life at my side--to be my second self, and best earthly companion."

"For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it."

"Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too."

A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away--away--to an indefinite distance--it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said -

"Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another."

"I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return."

"But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry."

I was silent: I thought he mocked me.

"Come, Jane--come hither."

"Your bride stands between us."

He rose, and with a stride reached me.

"My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?'"
— Charlotte Brontë

"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. Charlotte Bronte--"Jane Eyre""
— Charlotte Brontë

"Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do?......I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad-as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth-so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane-quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure - you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow."
— Charlotte Brontë

"Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. "
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"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. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. 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, to 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. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"'-- 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.'

-Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

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

- Jane Eyre {Jane Eyre}"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us. ~Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Am I hideous, Jane?

Very, sir: you always were, you know.
"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home."
— Charlotte Brontë

"'No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,' he began, 'especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?'

'They go to hell,' was my ready and orthodox answer.

'And what is hell? Can you tell me that?'

'A pit full of fire.'

'And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?'

'No, sir.'

'What must you do to avoid it?'

I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: 'I must keep in good health and not die.'"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)