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

This line is spoken by Jane Eyre in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel *Jane Eyre*, during a moment when Jane reflects on the futility of dwelling on grievances. Brontë’s heroine repeatedly confronts humiliation, injustice, and betrayal—first as an orphaned dependent, later as a governess—yet she insists on moral self-respect rather than corrosive resentment. The sentiment aligns with the novel’s broader ethical and psychological concerns: how to preserve integrity and emotional vitality amid social constraint and personal injury. Brontë’s own life, marked by loss and hardship, lends additional plausibility to the novel’s emphasis on endurance without vindictiveness.

The quotation rejects the idea that a meaningful life can be built on grievance-keeping. “Nursing animosity” suggests a perverse intimacy with anger—tending it as if it were something to be cherished—while “registering wrongs” evokes a ledger of injuries that turns memory into a tool of self-poisoning. The speaker’s appeal to life’s brevity frames forgiveness (or at least the refusal to brood) as a practical moral choice: time and inner energy are finite, and resentment consumes both without repairing the past. In *Jane Eyre*, this stance also signals independence: Jane will not let others’ cruelty define her inner life.