Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes

One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to beloved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannotcleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have neverloved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughtstoo much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Take care. If you do not speak – I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way. Send me away at once, if I must go; – Margaret! –

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

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

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

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

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

By degrees they spoke of education , and the book-learning that forms one part of it; and the result was that Ruth determined to get up early all throughout the bright summer mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be give to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

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

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

It might, or it might not. There's two opinons to go settling that point. But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and not truth to me unless I know the meaning o' the words.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, ‘All are shadows!—all are passing!—all is past!

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

What do you expect—not indifference or ingratitude?’ (-Miss Benson) ‘It is better not to expect or calculate consequences. The longer I live, the more fully I see that. Let us try simply to do right actions, without thinking of the feelings they are to call out in others. We know that no holy or self-denying effort can fall to the ground vain and useless; but the sweep of eternity is large, and God along knows when the effect is to be produced. We are trying to do right now, and to feel right; don’t let us perplex ourselves with endeavoring to map out how she should feel, or how she should show her feelings.’ (-Thurstan)

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Miss Jenkyns wore a cravat, and a little bonnet like a jockey-cap, and altogether had the appearance of a strong-minded woman; although she would have despised the modern idea of women being equal to men. Equal, indeed! she knew they were superior.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Her mouth was wide; no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a 'yes' and 'no', and 'an't please you, sir'.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

She then thought the land enchanted into everlasting brightness and happiness; she fancied, then, that into a region so lovely no bale or woe could enter, but would be charmed away and disappear before the sight of the glorious guardian mountains. Now she knew the truth, that earth has no barrier which avails against agony.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The traditions of . . . bygone times, even to the smallest social particular, enable one to understand more clearly the circumstances with contributed to the formation of character. The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes - when an inward necessity for independent individual action arises, which is superior to all outward conventionalities. Therefore it is well to know what were the chains of daily domestic habit which were the natural leading-strings of our forefathers before they learnt to go alone.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

With a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red cam above the horizon, and immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking the flower-buds to the life of another day.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

…I have never seen mountains before, and they fill me and oppress me so much that I could not sleep; I must keep awake this first night, and see that they don’t fall on the earth and overwhelm it. [- Miss Benson to her brother, Thurstan]

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The temptation is too strong for me. Oh, Lord! where is Thy peace that I believed in, in my childhood? – that I hear people speaking of now, as if it hushed up the troubles of life, and had not to be sought for – sought for, as with tears of blood! [-Jemima, chapter 26, pg. 275]

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

...somehow, the very errors and faults of one individual served to call out the higher excellencies in another, and so they re-acted upon each other, and the result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

He may care for her, though she really has been almost rude to him at times. But she! – why, Margaret would never think of him, I’m sure! Such a thing has never entered her head.Entering her heart would do.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

I value my ownindependence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than thatof having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturingme, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He mightbe the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel andresent his interference...

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

He spoke as if the answer were a matter of indifference to him. But it was not so. For all his pain, he longed to see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, when he thought of that gentle familiar attitude and all the attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew her picture in his mind--a longing for the very atmosphere she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal centre.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

My father was a man, and I know the sex pretty well.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

But she had learnt, in those solemn hours of thought, that she herself must one day answer for her own life, and what she had done with it; and she tried to settle that most difficult problem, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Miss Benson had the power; which some people have, of carrying her wishes through to fulfillment; her will was strong, her sense was excellent, and people yielded to her – they did not know why.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

On some such night as this she remembered promising to herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche; it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a life would be accomplished. And now she had learnt that not only to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly heroic. Trusting to herself, she had fallen.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

If all the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to deceive, --if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives in peril, --if no one should ever know of her truth or her falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by, straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth for evermore.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Her thoughts are full of other things just now; and people have such different ways of showing feeling: some by silence, some by words.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Ask , and it shall be given until you. That is no vain or untried promise, Ruth!

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her laziness to have fully explained before they passed away; the stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and warm on the sandy shore even at the end of November; the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam: - it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly — better than always doubting and doubting and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Another year passed on . The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night :And Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep,and think in her half dreamy, half awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side ,as she used to do 'in the days of long-ago'; with shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies--mother, I can't speak of what I shall feel if she dies. His voice was choked in his throat.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell