Everyone has a favorite quote from Jane Eyre; my friend, Erica, and I have compiled a list of our favorite quotes from the novel. If you'd like to add your's email me and I'll be happy to include it.

"Tell me, now, fairy as you are, - can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
"It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added,"a loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty." Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the presnt instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling-he shed it over me now."

"...An impluse held me fast,-a force turned me round. I said,-or something in me said for me, and in spirt of me:- "Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for you great kindness. I am stragely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home--my only home."

"I used to look at my master's face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings. If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he beame even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence; never been kinder to me when there-and alas! never had I loved him so well."

"But as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who accompany the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you study? One figure whose movements you follow with, at least, curiosity?"

"You did not act the character of a gipsy with me."
"What character did I act? My own?"
"No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying to draw me out-or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir."
"Do you forgive me, Jane?"
"I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you; but it was not right.'
"Oh you have been very correct-very careful, very sensible."

"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, 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."

"You never felt jealousy, did you Miss Eyre? Of course not:I need not ask you: because you never felt love. You have sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall wake it."

"'I will like it... I dare like it...' I will keep my word: I will break obsiticals to happiness, to goodness-- yes, goodness; I wish to be a better man than I have been..."

"The ease of his mannor freed me from painful restraint: the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him. I felt at times as if he were me relation, rather than my master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest added to my life, that I ceased to pine after kindred."

"And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader. Gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults-- indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every discription. In my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody to... But I beleived that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their sourse in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principals, and purer tastes than such circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destany encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they were hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I greive for his greif, whatever it was, and would have given much to assuage it."

"'What?' he exclaimed, 'are you quitting me already: and in that way?'
'You said I might go, sir.'
'But not without taking leave; not without a word of two of acknowledgement and good will: not, in short, in that breif, dry fashion. Why, you saved my life!-- snatched me from a horrible and escrutiatend dreath!-- and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shakes hands.' He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in both his own. 'You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immence a dept. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different;-- I feel your benifits no burden, Jane.'
He paused; gazed at me: word almost visable trembled on his lips,-- but his voice was checked."

"'I knew,' he continued,'you would do me good in some way, at sometime;-- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not-- (again he stopped)-- did not (he proceded hastily) strick delight to my innermost heart for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii-- there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good night!' Strange energy was in his voice; strange fire in his look."

"'What? you will go?'
"I am cold, sir.'
'Cold? Yes,-- and standing in a pool! Go, then Jane; go!' But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it."

"I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night. I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye."

"'Yet,' suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own heart, 'you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves of you-- at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and last night-- remember his words; remember his looks, remember his voice!'"

"Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night-- of the gerenal state of mind which I have induldged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come foward and told in her own quiet way , a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;-- I pronounced judgement to this effect:-- That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed the poisin as if it were necter."

"'You,' I said, 'a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference- equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dare you? Poor stupid dupe!- Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?- Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly 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.'"

"'... tommorrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chaulk your own picture, faithfully; without softening one defect: omit no harch line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain."

"'Whenever in the future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say "Mr. Rochester might probably win that nobal lady's love, if he choses to strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this indignent and insignificant peblian?"'"

"Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I just said-- 'You have nothing to do with the master of Tornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protegee, and to be greatful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie that he seriously acknowledges between you and him: so don't make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, so forth. He is not of your order: keep your caste, and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted, and would be despised.'"

"I had not intended to love him: the reader knows I have wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and no, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me."

"He was talking, at the moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I wondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so penetrating: I expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under it; yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. 'He is not to them what he is to me,' I thought: 'he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine;-- I am sure he is-- I feel akin to him-- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:- and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.''

"Well, tonight I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don't neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adele. Good-night my--" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me."

"Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise-pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited, than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow-that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad."

"Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?"
I had a gold watch-chain: I answered, "Yes."
"And have you a pale blue dress on?" I had. He informed me then, that for some he hadfancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was sure of it."

"...I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect, and life in its colour: and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple."

"And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking my coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot and I attributed to that circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into my sacer, I did not chose to consider."

"...I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it: just after I had rendered him, what he deemed, an essential service--and he, holding my hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I apporached him at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative postions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So far estranged that I didn ot expect him to come and speak to me."

"...the tones that then severed the air arrested me. Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester possessed a fine voice: he did--a mellow, powerful bass, into which he threw his own feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to the heart, and there waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last deep and full vibration had expired--till the tied of talk, checked an instant, had resumed its flow..."

"I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me--because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes and she passed; who if ever her dark and imperious eyes fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady--because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her--because I witnessed hourly in him a stlye of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible."

"I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him."

"Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart--have called love into his stern eye and softness into his sardonic face: or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have won."

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