Here are the top 70 Jane Eyre quotes that every modern woman—and man—can learn from!
So, if you’re in need of a little guidance and inspiration, then you should definitely check this collection out.
When it was first drafted by Charlotte Brontë, she never guessed that her work would be a major work of English literature.
It was an instant classic when it was first released in 1847, and is still much loved even today.
The novel explores different themes and became well-known for its realistic portrayal of a woman’s emotions, struggles, and social conditions.
Start reading the full collection below.
And make sure to check out these Pride and Prejudice quotes.
Best Jane Eyre Quotes
1. “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will.”
2. “I must keep in good health and not die.”
3. “You are my sympathy, my better self, my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment.”
4. “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.”
5. “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
6. “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.”
7. “I have, for the first time, found what I can truly love–I have found you.”
8. “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
9. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
10. “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.”
11. “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 revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”
12. “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!”
13. “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
14. “Reader, I married him.”
15. “I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.”
16. “I think you good, gifted, lovely—a fervent, solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
17. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own—in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
18. “I am not an angel, 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.”
19. “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”
Most Heartfelt Jane Eyre Quotes
20. “All my heart is yours, sir. It belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”
21. “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”
22. “Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.”
23. “You—you strange, you almost unearthly thing! I love you as my own flesh. You, poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat you to accept me as a husband.”
24. “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me as now—it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.”
25. “Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot.”
26. “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.”
27. “Women are supposed to be very calm generally, but women feel just as men feel.”
28. “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.”
29. “As for you, you’d forget me.”
30. “Your will shall decide your destiny.”
31. “It does good to no woman to be flattered by a man who does not intend to marry her; 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.”
32. “Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it. It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”
33. “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.”
34. “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter—in the eye.”
35. “I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
36. “I have little left in myself. I must have you.”
37. “I could risk no sort of answer by this time—my heart was still.”
38. “Even for me, life had its gleams of sunshine.”
39. “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 Quotes on Morals and Values
40. “Conventionality is not morality.”
41. “I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.”
42. “Self-righteousness is not religion.”
43. “It is not violence that best overcomes hate, nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”
44. “To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
45. “I desired more than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn’t help it. The restlessness is in my nature—it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
46. “Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”
47. “And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.”
48. “I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage—a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
49. “You are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be.”
Jane Eyre Quotes on Worldview and Perception
50. “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 the courage to go forth into its expanse—to seek real knowledge of life amidst it’s perils.”
51. “For that fate, you have already made your choice, and must abide by it.”
52. “He is not to them what he is to me.”
53. “It is far better to patiently endure a smart thing which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.”
54. “I knew you would do me good, in some way, at some time. I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you—their expression and smile did not strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.”
55. “It is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer.”
56. “All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me. We are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result.”
57. “Most true is that beauty is in the eye of the gazer.”
58. “If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse.”
59. “When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”
Jane Eyre Quotes on the Heart, Love, and Relationships
60. “I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I’d take to bleeding inwardly.”
61 “He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw.”
62. “I am not deceitful. If I were, I would say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you. I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world.”
63. “I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered. And yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
64. “I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.”
65. “I have now been married for ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.”
66. “No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am—ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”
67. “To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company.”
68. “We talk, I believe, all day long—to talk to each other is but more animated and audible thinking.”
69. “I loved him very much—more than I could trust myself to say, more than words had power to express.”
70. “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.”
Did These Jane Eyre Quotes Serve as Useful Guides That Will Help You Navigate Through the Experiences You’re Going Through?
Charlotte Brontë was dubbed as ‘the first historian of the private consciousness,’ and rightly so, as she crafted Jane Eyre—a coming of age story from a woman’s perspective. She showed the inner workings of a woman’s mind, her emotions, and her desires. Because of these, Jane Eyre immediately became a hit, both back then and until today. With a storyline that’s filled with a lot of lessons relevant to women, there’s no doubt that this novel remains one of the classics that people still look back on and study and analyze. One of the most important lessons it taught us is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Nowadays, a lot of people are obsessed with putting out the best versions of themselves on social media. However, we learn from Jane and Rochester’s story that a true relationship is more than just about one’s physical attributes. Instead, it’s about establishing a far deeper connection that one can only achieve if they’re open about their true selves—their imperfections, flaws, and all the positive things, too.
Have you come across Jane Eyre or Charlotte Brontë’s other works? Which quote had the most impact on you? We’d love to hear your thoughts about this collection, so please comment them down below.