24 Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes

Elizabeth Gaskell quotes

1. Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.

2. Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.

3. A wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.

4. That kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations.

5. People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.

6. Economy was always 'elegant', and money-spending always 'vulgar and ostentatious'; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied.

7. A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.

8. I'll not listen to reason:Reason always means what someone else has got to say.

1. She never called her son by any name but John; 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.

2. Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.

3. In all disappointments sympathy is a great balm.

4. But Margaret went less abroad, among machinery and men; saw less of power in its public effect, and, as it happened, she was thrown with one or two of those who, in all measures affecting masses of people, must be acute sufferers for the good of many. The question always is, has everything been done to make the sufferings of these exceptions as small as possible?

5. What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong.

6. Wearily she went to bed, wearily she arose in four or five hours' time. But with the morning came hope, and a brighter view of things.

7. No one loves me, - no one cares for me, but you, mother.

8. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me.

9. Mr. Thorton love Margaret! Why, Margraret would never think of him, I'm sure! Such a thing has never entered her head." "Entering her heart would do.

10. Margaret liked this smile; it was the first thing she had admired in this new friend of her father's; and the opposition of character, shown in all these details of appearance she had just been noticing, seemed to explain the attraction they evidently felt towards each other.

11. Don’t be afraid,” she said, coldly, “ as far as love may go she may be worthy of you. It must have taken a good deal to overcome her pride. Don’t be afraid, John.

12. In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his hip, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford.

13. He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words.

14. I have passed out of childhood into old age. I have had no youth - no womanhood; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me - for I shall never marry; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit.

15. I take it that 'gentleman' is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as 'a man,' we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow-men, but in relation to himself,--to life--to time--to eternity.

16. I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine...