Jane Eyre Quotes

I believe Jane Eyre to be one of the greatest stories ever written, and tonight, I was looking at my copy, just reading favourite parts, when I decided I simply had to make a list of my favourite quotes and excerpts from the book. So here they are:

1. "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. 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 snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." - Mr. Rochester.

2. "You - you strange - you almost unearthly thing! - I love as my own flesh." - Mr. Rochester.

3. " 'Come to me - come to me entirely now,' said he: and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, 'Make my happiness - I will make yours.' " - Mr. Rochester.

4. "No - no - Jane; you must not go. No - I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence - the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. 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." - Mr. Rochester.

5. "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, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me." - Jane Eyre.

6. " 'I knew,' he continued, '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 - (again he stopped) - did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so 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!' " - Mr. Rochester.

7. "Well he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him - or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence." - Jane Eyre, narrating.

8. " 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? 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 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 Eyre.

9. "My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol." - Jane Eyre, narrating.

10. "It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it - as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips - it came: in full, heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, 'the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me'. " - Jane Eyre, narrating.