Jane Eyre Quotes

I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel – I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. In this passage a very emotional Rochester passionately reaffirms his love for Jane. He is trying to persuade her to stay after the disaster of their abandoned wedding. Rochester uses powerful metaphorical images, comparing Jane to his good angel and saying that they are bound together and fused in one by the strong flame of passion. Some of the most romantic lines in all of literature are to be found in Jane Eyre. This is one of those passages.

To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery; you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly; I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first…shown to you, not my resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity, and to give me yours; Jane – give it to me now.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Explaining his deceit in not disclosing that he had a wife, Rochester admits to Jane that he is a flawed man. He accepts that he was a coward and should have trusted her with the truth about his “demon” wife. Rochester is not the typical romantic hero. He is a moody and brooding Byronic hero who is rough, flawed and haunted by his dark secret. His strong love for Jane speaks loudly in this passage.

I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty – “Depart!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. It takes all of Jane’s moral strength to break free from the grasp of Rochester’s charms and the power of their love. A metaphorical “hand of fiery iron” has her in its grasp. But her moral duty commands that she leave Thornfield and turn her back on love and the man she has worshiped like an idol.

Feeling…clamoured wildly. “Oh comply!” it said, “Think of his misery, think of his danger – look at his state when left alone…soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”
Still indomitable was the reply – “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour, stringent are they; inviolate they shall be…They have a worth – so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane – quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane is almost persuaded to give in to love and desire and remain with Rochester. Her mind and heart are in turmoil and conflict over the battle between what is right and wrong. Rochester, who is legally married to Bertha Mason, wants her to stay. Jane feels tested, admitting that her veins are metaphorically “running fire” with passion for Rochester. She also longs for a real family and sense of belonging – “Who in the world cares for you?” she asks herself. But she believes strongly that she would lose her self-respect if she were to agree to be Rochester’s mistress. In the end Jane’s moral principles win the internal debate that is raging in her head. She decides to abide by God’s law and leave Thornfield, even if that means being “solitary,” “friendless” and “unsustained.”

And it is you, spirit – with will and energy, and virtue and purity – that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester says this after seizing Jane and holding onto her with the grasp of a madman. He is desperate and doesn’t want to lose Jane. He expresses his desire to be purified by her virtue and spiritual energy. But Rochester has finally met his match in Jane’s indomitable spirit – she has decided to leave him. This is the fuller quote: “Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit – with will and energy, and virtue and purity – that I want: not alone your brittle frame.”

That night I never thought to sleep…I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood; I dreamt that I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall…I lifted my head to look; the roof resolved to clouds…the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come…as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk…then, not a moon, but a white human form, shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. On the night after the day of Jane’s canceled marriage, she is troubled by dark supernatural dreams. She has a vision of being in the red room at Gateshead and she remembers all the fear of being imprisoned there. She looks up at the ceiling and it turns to clouds. Using a nature simile, she describes how there is a gleam like the moon gives to vapors she is about to divide. This foreshadows her parting with Mr. Rochester. The moon appears, it bursts through the cloud and is transformed into a white human form – that of her late mother with a message for Jane.

“My daughter, flee temptation.”
“Mother, I will.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane dreams of her dead mother, transformed from the moon, whispering in her heart to flee temptation and do what is morally right. She promises that she will. The dream comes after the cancelation of her wedding, when Rochester is found to be already legally married to the madwoman in the attic. Gathering her modest belongings, Jane sneaks out of Thornfield and steals away. Jane’s mother died of typhus when she was a young girl.

No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like the world when the deluge was gone by.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane looks back on the life she has left at Thornfield, full of comfort and love, and contrasts it to the unknown and uncertain one she is going to. She uses a metaphor to compare her past and future to two very different pages.

I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering – and oh! with agony I thought of what I left.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane describes her feelings on the morning she quit Thornfield, the home she found for herself with Rochester. Now homeless, she wanders past fields and lanes and hedges. In the midst of nature, with its sunrise and smiling flowers, she finds no comfort. She compares having to leave Thornfield and Rochester to the agony of traveling to her own execution.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Here Jane addresses the reader, expressing her heartbreak at leaving Rochester and Thornfield. She dreads that her going may be the cause of the downfall of the man she loves. In her anguish she makes an appeal to Heaven with her prayers.

I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane’s relationship with the natural world is explored here. After her flight from Thornfield, Jane finds herself on the heath at nightfall and finds nature kind and nurturing. Even when alone and at her most desolate, Jane relies on nature to take care of her and make her feel loved – it is now her home and family.

A sad heart…It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 28. After Jane has fled from Rochester her heart longs for the man she still loves. But because of her moral compass, with Rochester being a legally married man, she cannot act on it. She uses an animal simile to compare her sad heart to a bird with broken wings.

Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was – what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light – I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr Rochester was safe: he was God’s and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long, in sleep, forgot sorrow.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 28. Alone and wandering in the wilderness, Jane finds spiritual comfort from her faith in the omnipotence and omnipresence of God. Looking up at the cloudless night sky, full of stars and the great Milky Way, she is inspired with new strength and confidence in the benevolence of God and nature. Offering up a prayer of thankgiving, she believes that God will keep safe the man she loves, Mr. Rochester.

This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering – a throe of true despair – rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned – I wrung my hands – I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation – this banishment from my kind!

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 28. After leaving Thornfield a homeless Jane has been wandering in the wilderness for days in search of food and is weak from hunger and exhaustion. The destitute Jane sees the distant light of a house across the moors and follows a road to it. But when she knocks at the door of Moor House (aka Marsh End) looking for shelter, the elderly servant turns her away. In Jane’s darkest moment of despair, she breaks down and collapses to the wet ground, waiting for death. Her struggle for independence threatens to destroy her.

“I can but die,” I said, “and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence.”
“All men must die,” said a voice, quite close at hand; “but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 28. The door of Moor House is shut to the destitute Jane, who lies on the ground waiting on God to decide if she lives or dies. But home owner St. John Rivers returns in time to save her. The clergyman offers her shelter.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 29. Jane says this about old servant Hannah, who at first judged her and refused her shelter when she knocked on the door of Moor House. Jane uses a gardening metaphor and simile to compare the heart to soil, where prejudices can grow like weeds if there is no education to fertilize it.

“And what business have you here?” she continued. “It is not your place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to license – but you are a visitor, and must go into the parlour.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 29. Jane is in the kitchen at Moor House, but Diana Rivers tells her to go to the parlor because she is a visitor. Diana is implying that Jane doesn’t belong with them in the kitchen, that she is not completely welcome in their home. It is a reminder to Jane of her homeless situation.

He was young – perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty – tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline; quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin…He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 29. Jane describes the physical features of St. John Rivers, who came to Jane’s rescue when he found her in a desperate state on his doorstep. Words like “pure” and “straight” hint at the personality of the young man of high principles who wants to become a missionary. In facial looks, St. John is about as opposite to Rochester as you can get. One is fair and handsome, the other dark and stern.

This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 29. Jane attempts to read St. John’s personality, noticing that he has a hardness and restlessness to his nature. While there may be a gentleness about his physical appearance, she doesn’t believe that his nature is gentle, yielding or placid.

“Mr. Rivers,” I said, turning to him and looking at him as he looked at me, openly and without indifference, “you and your sisters have done me a great service, the greatest man can do a fellow-being; you have rescued me, by your noble hospitality, from death. This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured as I can tell without compromising my own peace of mind – my own security.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 29. After spending three days and nights in bed recovering at Moor House, Jane thanks St. John and his sisters for rescuing her from certain death.

Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection – of the strongest kind – was the result. They discovered I could draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 30. Being with the Rivers sisters Diana and Mary rekindles Jane’s love of learning. They share an intellectual bond, with Diana teaching Jane German, and Jane in turn giving Mary drawing lessons. Jane observes that Diana’s nature and hers fit together so well.

But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friendship with him; he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 30. While Jane finds Diana and Mary Rivers friendly and welcoming, she doesn’t have the same experience with their brother St. John. Reserved and brooding and not one to enjoy the pleasures of life, he proves difficult to make friends with.
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