Jane Eyre

CRITIQUE | QUOTES | TEXT |AT THE MOVIES

Notable lines

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

— First line

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Preface to second edition

"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire."
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment: my answer when it did come was objectionable. "I must keep in good health,and not die."

 

It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

 

"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."

 

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs."

 

"If she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that."

 

"My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness."

 

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

 

"Am I hideous, Jane?"
"Very, sir: you always were, you know."

 

Reader, I married him.

 

"My Master," he says, "has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly,—'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly respond,—'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'"

— Last lines

 

CRITIQUE | QUOTES | TEXT |AT THE MOVIES

See also:

Pride and Prejudice

Wuthering Heights

Little Dorritt

Middlemarch

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Jane Eyre

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