Edward Rochester: Are you always drawn to the loveless and unfriended?
Jane Eyre: When it's deserved.

Edward Rochester: I put my requests in an absurd way. The fact is once and for all, I do not wish to treat you as an inferior, but I've baffled through varied experiences with many men of many nations and roved over the globe while you've spent your whole life with one set of people in one house. Don't you agree it gives me the right to be masterful and abrupt?
Jane Eyre: Do as you please, sir. You pay me 30 pounds a year for receiving your orders.

Jane Eyre: I should never mistake informality for insolence. One, I rather like; the other, no free-born person would submit to, even for a salary.
Edward Rochester: Humbug! Most free-born people would submit to anything for a salary.

Mrs. Reed: [introducing Jane] This, Mr. Brocklehurst, is the child in question. She is the daughter of my late sister's husband by an unfortunate union which we in the family prefer to forget. For some years she's lived in this house.

[first lines]
Jane Eyre: [narrating] My name is Jane Eyre... I was born in 1820, a harsh time of change in England. Money and position seemed all that mattered. Charity was a cold and disagreeable word. Religion too often wore a mask of bigotry and cruelty. There was no proper place for the poor or the unfortunate. I had no father or mother, brother or sister. As a child I lived with my aunt, Mrs. Reed of Gateshead Hall. I do not remember that she ever spoke one kind word to me.

Jane Eyre: [narrating] As the months went past, he came to see the light once more as well as to feel its warmth; to see first the glory of the sun, and then the mild splendour of the moon, and at last the evening star. And then one day, when our firstborn was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes as they once were... large, brilliant and black.