Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes

124 Sourced Quotes

How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!

Elizabeth Gaskell
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Margaret had always dreaded lest her courage should fail her in any emergency, and she should be proved to be, what she dreaded lest she was—a coward. But now, in this real great time of reasonable fear and nearness of terror, she forgot herself, and felt only an intense sympathy—intense to painfulness—in the interests of the moment.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.

Elizabeth Gaskell
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?

Elizabeth Gaskell
Again, stepping nearer, he besought her with another tremulous eager call upon her name. 'Margaret!' Still lower went the head; more closely hidden was the face, almost resting on the table before her. He came close to her. He knelt by her side, to bring his face to a level with her ear; and whispered-panted out the words: — 'Take care. — If you do not speak — I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way.

Elizabeth Gaskell
How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?

Elizabeth Gaskell
Your husband this morning! Mine tonight! What do you take him for?' 'A man' smiled Cynthia. 'And therefore, if you won't let me call him changeable, I'll coin a word and call him consolable.

Elizabeth Gaskell
And so she shuddered away from the threat of his enduring love. What did he mean? Had she not the power to daunt him? She would see. It was more daring than became a man to threaten her.

Elizabeth Gaskell
But I was right. I think that must be an hereditary quality, for my father says he is scarcely ever wrong.

Elizabeth Gaskell
I dare not hope. I never was fainthearted before; but I cannot believe such a creature cares for me.

Elizabeth Gaskell
She stood by the tea-table in a light-coloured muslin gown, which had a good deal of pink about it. She looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless, daintiness.

Elizabeth Gaskell
But Margaret was at an age when any apprehension, not absolutely based on a knowledge of facts, is easily banished for a time by a bright sunny day, or some happy outward circumstance. And when the brilliant fourteen fine days of October came on, her cares were all blown away as lightly as thistledown, and she thought of nothing but the glories of the forest.

Elizabeth Gaskell
But the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal leafiness - the warm odours of flowers and herb came sweet upon the sense.

Elizabeth Gaskell
It seems strange to think, that what gives us most hope for the future should be called Dolores, said Margaret.

Elizabeth Gaskell
I dare say there's many a woman makes as sad a mistake as I have done, and only finds it out too late.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Opportunities are not often wanting where inclination goes before...

Elizabeth Gaskell
It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Mr Thornton would rather have heard that she was suffering the natural sorrow. In the first place, there was selfishness enough in him to have taken pleasure in the idea that his great love might come in to comfort and console her; much the same kind of strange passionate pleasure which comes stinging through a mother's heart, when her drooping infant nestles close to her, and is dependent upon her for everything.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Oh, I can't describe my home. It is home, and I can't put its charm into words

Elizabeth Gaskell
She had a bracelet on one taper arm, which would fall down over her round wrist. Mr. Thornton watched the replacing of this troublesome ornament with far more attention than he listened to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated him to see her push it up impatiently, until it tightened her soft flesh; and then to mark the loosening—the fall. He could almost have exclaimed—'There it goes, again!

Elizabeth Gaskell
But now there was the new feeling — the last new feeling which we shall any of us experience in this world — that death was not only close at hand, but inevitable.

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

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

Elizabeth Gaskell
Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life....My precept is, do something, my sister, do good if you can; but at any rate, do something.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Those who are happy and successful themselves are too apt to make light of the misfortunes of others.

Elizabeth Gaskell
If Mr. Thornton was a fool in the morning, as he assured himself at least twenty times he was, he did not grow much wiser in that afternoon. All that he gained in return for his sixpenny omnibus ride, was a more vivid conviction that there never was, never could be, any one like Margaret; that she did not love him and never would; but that she — no! nor the whole world — should never hinder him from loving her.

Elizabeth Gaskell
To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!

Elizabeth Gaskell
He shook hands with Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact.

Elizabeth Gaskell