Jane Eyre

Quotes

• "I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt as long as I live." (Ch 4)
• "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." (Ch 12)
• "I think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly." (Ch 12)
• "It?s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.'" (Rochester, Ch 20)
• "Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I have a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." (Rochester, Ch 23)
• "My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness" (Rochester, Ch 23)
• "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself." (Ch 27)
• "'I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back aginst the rock. 'I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.'" (Ch 34)
• "I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before; it seemed in me--not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration." (Ch 36)
• "Reader, I married him." (Ch 38)