Quotes & Sayings About Jane Eyre

When The Journal of Words compiled its list of the one hundred best novels written in English, do you know that Pride and Prejudice was number twelve?" She stopped pacing and glared at Jane. "And do you know where Jane Eyre was?" she asked. She looked at the four of them in turn, but nobody answered her. "Number fifty-two!" she shrieked. "Fifty-two! Below that pornographic travesty Lolita!" She spat the title as if it were poison. "Below Huckleberry Finn! Below Ulysses. Have you ever tried to read Ulysses? Have you ever finished it? No, you haven't. No one has. They just carry it around and lie about having read it. — Michael Thomas Ford

I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. 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. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands
it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body. — Charlotte Bronte

I started reading seriously at seven or eight, books about myths and legends, the Narnia series. By the time I was 11, I had read all the children's books in my local library, so I moved on to 'Jane Eyre.' What I loved about Jane Eyre was that she didn't rely on her looks but her character. She had a spirit nobody could break. — Malorie Blackman

In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre? — Charlotte Bronte

I swung the door open and relaxed. She wasn't there. I stepped in and shut the door behind me. I had promised God I wouldn't touch anything. I'd just look at what was lying around. If Jane Eyre had only looked around a little, she might have saved herself a lot of heartache. — Annie Barrows

Though I no longer presumed to have a conscience, I have never once lacked feelings. — Lyndsay Faye

Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap. — China Mieville

Courtship? Had I said courtship? What did I think, that this was Jane freakin' Eyre? — Terri Farley

Any heroine worth reading about will one day find herself on the moors of a devastating personal crisis. For the most part, we must traverse them alone.
Chapter 10 Steadfastness Jane Eyre — Erin Blakemore

No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day. — Charlotte Bronte

Matt is a tortured soul,' Amanda insisted. 'He's Heathcliff and you're Cathy. He's Rochester and you're Jane Eyre. He's-'
'Darcy and I'm Elizabeth. I get it. And you're wrong. — Robin Brande

Yes Mrs Reed, to you i owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but i ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did while rendering my heart strings, you thought you were only uprooting your bad propensities. — Charlotte Bronte

The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived. — Emily Bronte

I told him then that I loved him.
"Because I've read Jane Eyre?" he asked incredulously. "Not because I realized the voice really was yours and ran down the hill to find you?"
"Both," I told him. "But mostly because of Jane Eyre. — Carol Goodman

His limp had been very pronounced that day, and he had been self-conscious, feeling - as he often did - as if he were playing the role of an impoverished governess in a Dickensian drama. — Hanya Yanagihara

St John Rivers: What will you do with all your fine accomplishments? Jane Eyre: I will save them until they're wanted. They will keep. — Charlotte Bronte

Yes, but I doubt Jane Eyre is explicit about irrational fucking.' 'Ah, so you believe my only source of information is a Bildungsroman from the nineteenth century about an orphan girl who marries a gigantic arse. — Charlotte Stein

I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here. — Charlotte Bronte

When I was a kid, I just read and read. We were lucky enough to have gone to England and had a whole bunch of Penguin Puffins books, like The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley, which is hilarious. I would love to be able to write a book like that, but I don't know that I have a humorous bone in my body when it comes to writing. Once on a Time by A.A. Milne. I read a lot of old, old fantasy stuff. The Carbonelbooks by Barbara Sleigh. Then when I got a little older I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I was a big fan of romance and when I got a little bit older I would read a Harlequin romance or a Georgette Heyer novel and then David Copperfield, and then another genre book and then Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. I was that kind of reader. One book that I loved was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I loved voice and that book had it in spades. And then of course I grew into loving Jane Eyre. — Franny Billingsley

And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more. — Charlotte Bronte

One aspect of Samantha's personality that drove me nuts was her tendency to reveal herself via literary allusions. She called it a quirk, but it was more of a compulsion. Her mother was Lady Macbeth; her father, Big Daddy. An uncle she liked was Mr. Micawber, a favorite governess, Jane Eyre; a doting professor, Mr. Chips.
This curious habit of hers quickly made the voyage from eccentric to bizarre when she began to invoke the names of literary characters to describe moments in our relationship. When she thought I was treating her rudely, she called me Wolf Larsen; if I was standoffish, I was Mr. Darcy; when I dressed too shabbily, I was Tom Joad.
Once, in bed, she yelled out the name Victor as she approached orgasm. I assumed she was referring to Victor Hugo because she'd been reading 'Les Miserables.'. It didn't really bother me that much though it was a little odd being with a woman who thought she was having sex with a dead French author. — John Blumenthal

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. — Charlotte Bronte

As a kid, I really loved 'Jane Eyre,' I used to fantasise that the past was so much better and my lifetime was crap. — Romola Garai

I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. — Charlotte Bronte

I recognized myself in Jane Eyre. It amazes me how many white people can't read themselves in black characters. I didn't feel any separation between me and Jane. We were tight. — Alice Walker

My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something: trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. — Charlotte Bronte

Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. — Charlotte Bronte

I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give. — Charlotte Bronte

I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.
'Oh, you are indeed there, my sky-lark! — Charlotte Bronte

The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land - Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes - and yet I shudder. — Charlotte Bronte

I've got the flask I stole from Elliot down in my locker," Annie says.

Time: three minutes, forty-two seconds. And the record of nine minutes, seven seconds continues to hold strong.

"You want a nip before you head over?" Annie offers sweetly.

She's a good friend - like Helen to Jane in Jane Eyre. As kind as she is pretty.

I shake my head. Then I pull my big-girl knickers up all the way to my neck. "I'll let you know how it goes — Emma Chase

The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then:
"Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up! — Eva Ibbotson

I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'
- Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte

When I was a kid, I knew the black and white version of 'Jane Eyre,' and I guess I became interested in the idea of romantic love - of unrequited love and the tragedies of that; of what are the important things in life; what should one value over other materials. — Cary Fukunaga

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 — Charlotte Bronte

My grandfather had a proper bookcase of egghead books, and he gave them to me in alphabetical order. So we moved from Aeschylus to the Brontas, and I can still remember the great relief of going from the dipus cycle to Jane Eyre. — Jill Paton Walsh

What Fresh Hell is this."

Jane Eyre — Jennifer Rinehart

Dr. Larch pointed out that Melony had taken Jane Eyre with her; he accepted this as a hopeful sign - wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she'll keep reading it, and reading it, Larch thought. — John Irving

You transfix me quite. — Charlotte Bronte

A preface to the first edition of "Jane Eyre" being unnecessary, I gave none: this second edition demands a few words both of acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark. — Charlotte Bronte

I Believe she thought I had forgotten my station; and yours, sir.'
'Station! Station!
your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter. — Charlotte Bronte

I would love to do a sweeping romantic period drama, like Jane Eyre. That would be my dream. It's always been my dream, as far as acting. — Chloe Sevigny

Jane Eyre
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. — Charlotte Bronte

'Jane Eyre,' when I think of that book, it conjures up the best moments of college English courses. Literature is extraordinary, especially when you have a good professor. — Edward P. Jones

With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters. — Cary Fukunaga

Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the first person, nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her. — Barbara Pym

I kinda go for the Jane Eyre type of film. I am fascinated by classics. — Tippi Hedren

'Jane Eyre' must have been something I read six or seven times as an early adolescent. And 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' and 'Lorna Doone' when I was younger. My parents had a pretty rich library, no jackets on any of the books, so no descriptions. You just pulled something off the shelf and started to read it. — Sue Miller

Who do you think you are, Jane Eyre? Grow up. Be sensible. Don't get carried away. — David Nicholls

Ah, but you're the insidious type
Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl. — Dodie Smith

I grew up with 'Jane Eyre,' reading it at school, and it's one of those, I think, for a lot of women, a lot of girls, it's the iconic story and so many girls relate to Jane Eyre and her character. — Sally Hawkins

She said she loved this place. This is the last she'll see of it. I'll watch for one tear, one human tear. Not that blank hating moonstruck face. I'll listen ... If she says good-bye perhaps adieu. Adieu
like those old-time songs she sang. Always adieu (and all the songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.
Antoinetta
I can be gentle too. Hide your face. Hide yourself but in my arms. You'll soon see how gentle. My lunatic. My mad girl. — Jean Rhys

Well, they got married. No one pulled a Jane Eyre ... — Charlaine Harris

When I was a teenager, I used to love the Bronte books, 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre.' In those books, the women do usually manage to heal the men, but in life, I've found it's often the woman gets wounded. Instead of healing a man, she gets affected by his cruelty. — Jocelyn Moorhouse

Reread that Bronte book all you want, but Jane Eyre's never going to get gender-reassignment surgery or train to become a kick-ass ninja assassin. — Chuck Palahniuk

Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night
of the general state of mind which I have indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward 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 judgment 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 poison as if it were nectar. — Charlotte Bronte

My subconscious rolls her eyes at me in despair and goes back to reading her dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre. — E.L. James

The horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. — Charlotte Bronte

I'm not lying, I was a killer Helen Burns. I stepped out on to that stage like I was the Great Esquimaux Curlew. When Jane Eyre came to look at my book
which happened to be Our Town
I handed it to her just right. When Miss Scatchard told me I never cleaned my nails, I was about as quiet and innocent as a Large-Billed Puffin. When she hit me a dozen times with a bunch of twigs, I was the Brown Pelican: I didn't bat an eye
and you try getting hit a dozen times with a bunch of twigs. And when I had to die, people were crying. Really. And you know why? Because I was the Black-Backed Gull, and so people cried like Helen Burns was their best friend. — Gary D. Schmidt

Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry - that parent of crime - an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths. — Charlotte Bronte

Reading was such a formative part of my childhood (along with 'Loony Tunes'), that it is difficult to pin point the most influential book. But, under an interrogation light I would probably have to say 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Good-night, my- He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me. — Charlotte Bronte

I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.'
'And then you won't know me, sir, and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket, -a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome,sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me. — Charlotte Bronte

But I tell you
and mark my words
you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current ... — Charlotte Bronte

I am no bird, no net ensnares me. — Charlotte Bronte

Then you and I should bid good-bye for a little while?"
I suppose so, sir."
And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I'm not quite up to it."
They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer."
Then say it."
Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present."
What must I say?"
The same, if you like, sir."
Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?"
Yes."
It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands for instance; but no
that would not content me either. So you'll do nothing more than say Farwell, Jane?"
It is enough, sir; as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many."
Very likely; but it is blank and cool
'Farewell. — Charlotte Bronte

What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his wife in the attic." -Angela Argo "Blue Angel — Francine Prose

Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. — Charlotte Bronte

I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms: you wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Jane? — Charlotte Bronte

Mr. Rochester never courted Jane Eyre, Tessa pointed out.
No, he dressed up as a woman and terrified the poor girl out of her wits. Is that what you want? — Cassandra Clare

Mr. Rochester : Your gaze is very direct, Miss Eyre. Do you think me handsome?
Jane Eyre: No, sir. — Charlotte Bronte

Growing up, I mostly read comic books and sci-fi. Then I discovered the book 'Jane Eyre' by Jane Austen. It introduced me to the world of romance, which I have since never left. Also, the world of the first-person narrative. — Meg Cabot

Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look. — Charlotte Bronte

What the deuce is to do now? — Charlotte Bronte

I love 'Jane Eyre,' and I love the Bronte sisters. I actually didn't read any of them until I was in college, so I don't have quite the same connection with them that I think a lot of women do. — Mallory Ortberg

He saw nature - he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam - of the landscape before us; of the weather round us and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. — Charlotte Bronte

Off course, if Steven had a wife in the attic, like Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, that, I thought, would be another matter entirely. But the very idea made me laugh. His building had no attic, and his one small closet couldn't even hold a skeleton. It was too packed with clothes, his and mine. — Lisa Tucker

Yet there was always in me, even when I was very small, the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I did, although, in my everyday life, I had nowhere to go and no imaginable reason on earth why I should want to leave. The buses took to the interstate without me, the trains sped by. So I wandered the world through books. I went to Victorian England in the pages of 'Middlemarch' and 'A little Princess', and to Saint Petersburg before the fall of the tsar with 'Anna Karenina'. I went to Tara, and Manderley, and Thornfield Hall, all those great houses, with their high ceilings and high drama, as I read 'Gone with the Wind', 'Rebecca' and 'Jane Eyre'. — Anna Quindlen

Charlotte Bronte borrowed liberally and sloppily from Joseph Sheridan le Fanu when penning Jane Eyre. The originality of this classic novel is tarnished as a result. — Andrew Barger

Of course I recognized it. How could I not, for I had read it goodness knows how many times. 'Jane Eyre,' I said wonderingly.
'You recognized it? Yes, it is. I asked a man in a library. It's by Charlotte someone. She had a lot of sisters, apparently. — Diane Setterfield

It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous. — Susan Isaacs

I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express.
- Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte

And I do not want a stranger - unsympathising, alien, different from me; I want my kidred: those with whom I have a full fellow-feeling. — Charlotte Bronte

The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day. Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets. — Stewart O'Nan

Just like in Jane Eyre, the moral of the story would be 'never forget that you're nothing but a sad sausage. — Fanny Britt

A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. 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. 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. — Charlotte Bronte

My hips bristle with totems and talismans, proof that I am not simply a character in a fixed book or film. I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment. Advancing beside Archer, I am resplendent in my savage finery of seized power. In my service charge the collected blackguards of a dozen tyrants now dispatched to a lesser oblivion. My fingers, stained crimson with the blood of despots, are not the fingers which paged through the paper lives of helpless romantic heroines. No more am I a passive damsel who waits for circumstance to decide her fate; now have I become the scalawag, the swashbuckler, the Heathcliff of my dreams bent on rescuing myself. For now do I embody all the traits I had so hoped to find in Goran. Meaning: No longer am I limited. — Chuck Palahniuk

His presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. — Charlotte Bronte

Like the locked room upstairs? Listen. I've read Jane Eyre. That better be a red room of pain up there, and not your ex-wife. — Kristan Higgins

For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial. — Charlotte Bronte

Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet.
Jane Eyre. — Charlotte Bronte

Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary. — Charlotte Bronte

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rock; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disc; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn bloom. — Charlotte Bronte

'Sin Nombre' was almost like the adolescent version of 'Jane Eyre.' 'Jane Eyre' sort of picks up where 'Sin Nombre' ends. It's about this girl who starts off on her own at her lowest point of despair, and she figures out how she got there. — Cary Fukunaga

I choose you and I would choose you all over again. As Jane Eyre said of her Mr. Rochester, "I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blessed - blessed beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine."1 — Jen Hatmaker

Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. - Helen Burns — Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre may be an orphan, homely, battered, alone and abandoned, but she is not, never has been and never will be a big fat sausage. — Fanny Britt

No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it. — Charlotte Bronte

An door of camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room: and i passed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night should here me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for I must see Helen,- I must embrace her before she died,- I must give her one last kiss, exchange with her one last word. — Charlotte Bronte

Pudge," she said, faux-condescending, "the sound is an integral part of the artistic experience of this video game. Muting Decapitation would be like reading only every other word of Jane Eyre. — John Green