Jane Steele Quotes
"Of all my many murders, committed for love and for better reasons, the first was the most important."
"Autobiographies depend upon truth; but I have been lying for such a very long, lonesome time."
"Whoever heard of disembodied voices calling to governesses, of all people, as this Jane’s do?"
"Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned?"
"It was the boarding school that taught me to act as a wolf in girl’s clothing should."
"You cannot attend," Aunt Patience explained in a strained drone for the third time. "You are far too hysterical to appear in pub—"
"It is a hard thing to lose your mother so suddenly, but many others have lived to tell the tale."
"For instance, I remember my mother asking me at five years old, 'Are you hurt, chérie?'"
"I may always have been wicked, but I was not always universally loathed."
"Mamma softly pulled her fingers into small fists. 'Please in future recall my daughter’s rights, all of her rights, or you will regret it,' Mrs. Steele ordered."
"Faulting the work for its wild fancies seems petty, however, for there are marvellous moments within."
"If you cannot attend," Aunt Patience explained in a strained drone for the third time. "You are far too hysterical to appear in pub—"
"My thoughts drifted from the horses to the uses I might make of them."
"It was either spectacular, or else the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen."
"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 as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer."
"Friends," groaned Taylor. She kicked me with feet cold as snow, rolling out of bed. "I told you. Don’t bother."
"My first class was art, headed by Miss Constance Sheffleton, a timid silver-haired rabbit who would not have recognised discipline had it whipped her across the palms."
"Why, Steele, though you are not well-read regarding the Ottoman Empire, you ask exceedingly incisive questions," she exclaimed. "You shall sit with the thirteen-year-olds and with Clarke here."
"I reproduce this workaday agenda to illustrate that we lived practically in one another’s pockets, so that in moments of emergency—which were as frequent as moments of breathing—we might offer help."
""I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. . . . By dying young I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault."
"If I must go to hell to find my mother again, so be it: I will be another embodied disaster."
"Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre: remorse is the poison of life."
"You will have to be severely punished for this."
"Still—I watched Bertha Grizzlehurst gather up scattered flour from her breadboard as if it were gold dust."
"Small wonder, not knowing how hard the world truly was, I sat so peaceably over my paper and nibs in those final hours."
"I shut my eyes since she could not see me, simply grateful for her."
"You’re an evil temptress and I shun your wiles."
"The people in the slim red book thirsted for closeness, unfolded themselves in turgid metaphors like the petals of a spring rose."
"Secrets decay, as corpses do, growing ranker over time."
"I’ll take care of everything, just don’t hurt her anymore. Get out."
"We all wept long and low at the waste the world produces."
"I’ve no intention of praying for you at all."
"It’s nothing. But I ought to have made you take it before now—forgive me."
"Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets."
"In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style; like any other spoony."
"I’ve thrown him over. He snores, and he wasn’t much cop at anything."
"Bloody hell, if ye net a guppy, toss ’im back in the river."
"How is that possible, the East India Company only having arrived there some five years ago?"
"Blast, what a shame! I was so looking forward to having ’em off here in the road. Would’ve been like old times, I can hear the drum and the fife even now. Make certain all is well, please."
"All my bones are inside. I do beg your pardon, sir—had it been someone other than you there in the roadway, I don’t know what I should have done."
"Called some other whoreson bastard a whoreson bastard, I expect."
"I requested the local inn to house Falstaff for the night to take a weight off my conscience."
"Supposing you desire Sahjara’s respect, shall I assume you don’t want your corpse to be discovered with a snapped neck?"
"I fear this injury should be seen to speedily, Mr. Thornfield."
"I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night."
"Groaning aloud did me no tangible good, reader: and yet, groan aloud I did."
"I’ll lead Nalin," Mr. Thornfield proposed, linking his fingers together and leaning to make a step for me. "Quick, now, before you indulge the urge to faint at last."
"Step by step I advanced, careful of the faint echoes of my healed injuries, eyes watering as I peered into the gloom."
"All was sable midnight surrounding me, and I shared the room with Mr. Thornfield and a naked corpse."
""Jane, please—are you hurt, or only frightened? Jane...you’re quite safe.""
""I’m all right," I managed. "The light gave me a turn when it went out, and...the…""
""Confound it, Jane, you’ve no business here!" Mr. Thornfield snapped."
""I heard noises. Pray don’t be angry, I was thinking of thieves, I—""
""I was half sleepwalking. I’m sorry." I steadied myself and gripped Mr. Thornfield’s forearm, looking down."
""Forgive me." My enterprise now seemed detestable."
""Oh, please, if you will have me, I should prefer to…to stay.""
""You are mute, Jane. When we walk out of this place, will we two still be friends?" he asked."
""Jane, if anyone ever finds you objectionable, direct me to his house that I might test my crop upon his sorry hide. Please believe that I do not, and forgive me for having befriended you; I ought to have calculated the effect that our conversations might have upon an English—""
""I won’t be torn apart at all, supposing you stay near, sir.""
""Jane." Reaching, Mr. Thornfield trailed his fingers over my shoulder."
""Don’t stand there deciding whilst I watch you." Tears were forming, and I forced them back."
""Such a fragile soul she turns out to be after all," he said softly."
"My note concerns matters confidential in nature, for I gather through your own curtailed speech and hints dropped by the always sinister Messrs. Charles Thornfield and Sardar Singh that acquaintances were renewed at Mr. John Clements’s funeral which rekindled old grievances."
"I hereby confess that I was so frightened by their display of weaponry that I embarked upon my own private investigation."
"It should not do to lay it on too thick; however, Sack had seemed more of a vicious bully than a master criminal."
"The results of this amateur exploit have been most fruitful—indeed, I may well have learnt the whereabouts of a long-lost object."
"Letters to me can be sent to the above address under the name Miss Jane Smith, as bloody deeds were enacted which precipitated my flight from Highgate House."
"Pray exercise your empathy, Mr. Sack, when I tell you I was determined to learn all I could in the interests of my own safety."
"Speak to no one of Miss Stone, if you would be so kind; a Mr. Jack Ghosh, or so I have been told he was identified, broke in during the small hours and died of some misadventure."
"An equally frigid smile touched my lips at the thought I might soon enter its stone maw, a predator in the guise of a slender young woman."
"I had only to wait one day to hear from Mr. Sneeves; he was from home, the message having been forwarded, and so I must wait two more days to meet with him."
"Discovering the man who could see me hanged sitting on my striped chaise, smiling peaceably with his hat in his hand, might have been unbearable had I been in a merry humour."
"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion."
"Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive."
"Here perished a species which lived to tell stories."
"One is not always directly regarding the full moon, Jane—but should it disappear, the oceans would rot."
"Why didn’t you tell them about Karman’s fortune after Sahjara was rescued?"
"We tell stories to strangers to ingratiate ourselves, stories to lovers to better adhere us skin to skin, stories in our heads to banish the demons."
"I’ll teach you to use ’em, they’re easy as anything."
"We are so locked within ourselves, we often lack perspective on these subjects."
"I think it is safe to say I shall insist."