A Few Favorite Quotes from 'Jane Eyre'

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"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns." - Charlotte Bronte (writing as Currer Bell) in the preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, dated December 21, 1847

From the novel:

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally, but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts just as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags." (Volume 1, Chapter 12)

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"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." (Volume 1, Chapter 13) This is the first of many references Rochester makes to Jane being a witch or a fairy. Jane is an orphan, raised by her mean aunt in a house with a horrible male cousin before she's sent off to a boarding school, much like Harry Potter - coincidence? 

(St. John Rivers) "What will you do with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your mind - sentiments - tastes?"

(Jane) "Save them till they are wanted. They will keep." (Volume 3, Chapter 4)

One final favorite Jane quote (again, she's speaking to St. John): "And I am a hard woman - impossible to put off." 

Next, on to reading Jane Eyre Laid Bare, the erotica mash-up by Charlotte Bronte and Eve Sinclair.