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

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

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

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?

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

Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.

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

You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.

I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.

Jane Eyre