Top 100 Gaskell Quotes
#1. On Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Sylvia's Lovers'.
'Philip Hepuburn worships Sylvia Robson, and finds dishonour' Sylvia Robson worships Charley Kinraid, and finds disillusionment. Charley Kinraid worships himself, and finds a career in the Royal Navy and an heiress who agrees with him.
Lucinda Elliot
#2. Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn't write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began - the first morning - and I've never stopped.
Jane Gardam
#3. Will you not see?" she cried. "You are not as other men are. Why need you bow to a Fate? Can you not change it?
Jane Gaskell
#5. I don't believe there's a man in Milton who knows how to sit still; and it is a great art.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#6. I had such a mother as few are blest with; a woman of strong power, and firm resolve.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#7. Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#8. She is too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall be a specimen of the building of my palace.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#9. Only you're right in saying she's too good an opinion of herself to think of you. The saucy jade! I should like to know where she'd find a better!
Elizabeth Gaskell
#10. The ladies of Cranford always dressed with chaste elegance and propriety ...
Elizabeth Gaskell
#11. 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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#12. 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
#15. He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, and leanness goes a great way towards gentility.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#16. Miserably disturbed!' that is not strong enough. He was haunted by the remembrance of the handsome young man, with whom she stood in an attitude of such familiar confidence; and the remembrance shot through him like an agony, till it made him clench his hands tight in order to subdue the pain.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#17. I know we differ in our religious opinions; but don't you give me credit for having some, though not the same as yours?
Elizabeth Gaskell
#18. Out of the way! We are in the throes of an exceptional emergency! This is no occassion for sport- there is lace at stake! (Ms. Pole)
Elizabeth Gaskell
#20. I'm not saying she was very silly, but one of us was very silly and it wasn't me.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#21. But I'm tired of this bustle. Everybody rushing over everybody, in their hurry to get rich.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#22. Do I not know anxiety, though I go about well-dressed, and have food enough? Oh, Bessy, God is just, and our lots are well portioned out by Him, although none but He knows the bitterness of our souls.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#24. Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future. They
Elizabeth Gaskell
#25. - Ay! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him.
- He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? what sort of master is he?
- Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hindlegs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#26. Sometimes when I've thought o' my life, and the little pleasure I've had in it, I've believed that, maybe, I was one of those doomed to die by the falling of a star from heaven.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#27. Take care. -If you do not speak- I shall claim you as my own in some presumptuous way. -Send me away at once, if I must go; -Margaret!-
Elizabeth Gaskell
#28. Being daunted by her father in every intellectual attempt, she read every book that came in her way, almost with as much delight as if it had been forbidden.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#30. And she swept out of it with the noiseless grace of an offended princess.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#31. It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#32. I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#33. The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#34. 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
#35. All the morning since he got up he had been trying to fight through his duties - leaning against a hope - a hope that first had bowed, and then had broke as soon as he really tried its weight.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#37. Nay, nay!" said the Squire. "It's not so easy to break one's heart. Sometimes I've wished it were. But one has to go on living - 'all the appointed days,' as is said in the Bible.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#39. I don't mind your calling me a clog, if only we were fastened together."
"But I do mind you calling me a donkey," he replied.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#40. He swallowed down the dry choking sobs which had been heaving up from his heart hitherto ...
Elizabeth Gaskell
#41. Similarity of opinion is not always - I think not often - needed for fullness and perfection of love.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#42. I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#43. Tell me what he was like as a baby."
"Why, Margaret, you must not be hurt, but he was much prettier than you were. I remember, when I first saw you in Dixon's arms, I said, 'Dear, what an ugly little thing!
Elizabeth Gaskell
#44. Opportunities are not often wanting where inclination goes before ...
Elizabeth Gaskell
#45. It is a great truth that you cannot extinguish violence by violence.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#46. 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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#47. 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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#48. But when the secrets of all hearts shall be made known, their virtues will astound us in far greater degree.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#49. If the world was full of perplexing problems she would trust, and only ask to see the one step needful for the hour.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#50. Even before he left the room, - and certainly, not five minutes after, the clear conviction dawned upon her, shined bright upon her, that he did love her; that he had loved her; that he would love her.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#51. Really it is very wholesome exercise, this trying to make one's words represent one's thoughts, instead of merely looking to their effect on others.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#52. ... he strove to leave his life in the hands of God, and to forget himself.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#53. Pray don't go into similes, Margaret; you have led us off once already,' said her father, smiling, yet uneasy at the thought that they were detaining Mr. Thornton against his will, which was a mistake; for he rather liked it, as long as Margaret would talk, although what she said only irritated him.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#55. And in his button-hole he stuck a narcissus, hoping it would attract Mary's notice, so that he might have the delight of giving it her.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#56. There she stood, frightened, yet brave, not letting go her hold on what she meant to do, even when things seemed to be most against her.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#57. But when she got into her own, she locked the door, and sate down to cry unwonted tears.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#59. In general, it is the people who are left behind stationary, who give way to low spirits at any parting; the travellers, however bitterly they may feel the separation, find something in the change of scene to soften regret in the very first hour of separation.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#60. But ne'er mind. We're but where we was; and I'll break stones on th' road afore I let these little uns clem.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#61. I dare say, my remark came from the professional feeling of there being nothing like leather.
[Mr. Hale
about books; reminding me of my statement that "there is nothing like holding a real book in your hands"]
Elizabeth Gaskell
#62. God is just, and our lots are well portioned out by Him, although none but He knows the bitterness of our souls.
Margaret to Bessy re: trials & burdens we all carry
Elizabeth Gaskell
#64. Ask , and it shall be given until you. That is no vain or untried promise, Ruth!
Elizabeth Gaskell
#65. I made such an idol of my beautiful Osborne, and now it turns out he has feet of clay.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#66. 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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#67. His laws once broken, His justice and the very nature of those laws bring the immutable retribution; but if we turn penitently to Him, He enables us to bear our punishment with a meek and docile heart, 'for His mercy endureth forever.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#68. 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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#69. If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances, not friends
Elizabeth Gaskell
#70. The contemplation of it, even at this distance of time, has taken away my breath and my grammar, and unless I subdue my emotion, my spelling will go too.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#71. I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#74. 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
#75. She handed him his cup of tea ... and he almost longed to ask her to do for him what he saw her compelled to do for her father, who took her little finger and thumb in his masculine hand, and made them serve as suar-tongs.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#76. And now she had learnt that not only to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly heroic.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#77. 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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#78. Sally, do you think God has put us into the world just to be selfish, and do nothing but see after our own souls? or to help one another with heart and hand, as Christ did to all who wanted help?
Elizabeth Gaskell
#79. She lay with her face to the wall, muttering low, but muttering always: Alas! alas! what is done in youth can never be undone in age! what is done in youth can never be undone in age!
Elizabeth Gaskell
#80. Oh! sad is the night-time,
The night-time of sorrow,
When through the deep gloom, we catch but the boom
Of the waves that may whelm us to-morrow.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#81. She went out, going rapidly towards the country, and trying to drown reflection by swiftness of motion.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#82. Ay! but mother's words are scarce, and weigh heavy. Father's liker me, and we talk a deal o' rubble; but mother's words are liker to hewn stone. She puts a deal o' meaning in 'em.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#83. I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white, it's snow-white.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#84. I do try to say, God's will be done, sir," said the Squire, looking up at Mr. Gibson for the first time, and speaking with more life in his voice; "but it's harder to be resigned than happy people think.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#85. begin to understand now what heaven must be - and, oh! the grandeur and repose of the words - "The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Everlasting! "From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." That
Elizabeth Gaskell
#86. My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal a feeling.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#88. Mr Thornton sighed as he took in all this with one of his sudden comprehensive glances. And then he turned his back to the young ladies, and threw himself, with an effort, but with all his heart and soul, into a conversation with Mr Hale.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#89. 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
#90. When we are heavy-laden in our hearts, it falls in better with our humor to reveal our case in our own way and our own time.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#91. 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
#92. Roger let go; they were now on firm ground, and he did not wish any watchers to think that he was exercising any constraint over his father; and this quiet obedience to his impatient commands did more to soothe the Squire than anything else could have effected just then.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#93. As she realized what might have been, she grew to be thankful for what was.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#94. A few moments may change our character for life, by giving a totally different direction to our aims and energies.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#95. 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
#96. I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their poorness of character.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#98. A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#99. And as I said before, though I should na' say it, I'm a good hand, measter, and a steady man - specially when I can keep fro' drink; and that
Elizabeth Gaskell
#100. She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of duty.
Elizabeth Gaskell
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