Charlotte Brontë Quotes: On Her 200th Birthday, 20 Quotes And Sayings By The 'Jane Eyre' Author

Thursday would be Charlotte Brontë's 200th birthday. The English writer known for the 1847 novel "Jane Eyre" was born on April 21, 1816, near Thornton in Yorkshire, England, and had a prolific career penning books and poems. She often wrote under a pen name, Currer Bell, with her sisters.

On Thursday, residents in the village where Brontë grew up are scheduled to hold a small ceremony and birthday party in her honor complete with a birthday cake. Kids will perform scenes from "Jane Eyre" and "visitors who go along in costume will be very welcome," the Keighley News reported.

If you can't get to Haworth, why not remember the famous author than by reading her words? Here are 20 quotes from Brontë's works, collected from Goodreads, the Guardian and Notable Quotes:

“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.”

“Love is real — the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know.”

"The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

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

"No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise."

“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”

"Your will shall decide your destiny."

“You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world.”

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

“It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you, — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”

“Conventionality is not morality.”

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

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel.”

“But I tell you — and mark my words — you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current...”

“Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.”

"Better to be without logic than without feeling."

"I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line."

"Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star."