In honour of Charlotte Brontë's 199th birthday this year, we've rounded up her most empowering and inspiring quotes...
1. 'I would always rather be happy than dignified.'
2. 'I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.'
3. 'Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.'
4. 'Your will shall decide your destiny.'
5. 'Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.'
6. 'But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!'
7. 'Conventionality is not morality.'
8. 'Better to be without logic than without feeling.'
9. 'If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed.'
10. 'It is not violence that best overcomes hate - nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.'
11. 'It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.'
12. 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.'