Book detail: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated) is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated) is a meticulously curated compilation featuring all the literary contributions of Elizabeth Gaskell, a prominent figure in Victorian literature. This collection is enhanced with illustrations that aim to enrich the reading experience, offering a visual complement to Gaskell's timeless narratives. The works within this collection are believed to encompass her most celebrated novels and short stories, providing readers with a comprehensive view of her writing career.
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“Th' longest lane will have a turning.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Opportunities are not often wanting where inclination goes before.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“In all disappointments sympathy is a great balm.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Waiting is far more difficult than doing.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!' 'Not good enough! Don't mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love. But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“But I was right. I think that must be an hereditary quality, for my father says he is scarcely ever wrong.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“No one loves me, - no one cares for me, but you, mother.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“I daresay it seems foolish; perhaps all our earthly trials will appear foolish to us after a while; perhaps they seem so now to angels. But we are ourselves, you know, and this is now, not some time to come, a long, long way off. And we are not angels, to be comforted by seeing the ends for which everything is sent.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“When prayers were ended, and his Mother had wished him good-night with that long steady look of hers which conveyed no expression of the tenderness that was in her heart, but yet had all the intensity of a blessing.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“She lay down and never stirred. To move hand or foot, or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion beyond the powers of either volition or motion. She was so tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable identity.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of duty.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“It seems strange to think, that what gives us most hope for the future should be called Dolores, said Margaret.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Every mile was redolent of associations, which she would not have missed for the world, but each of which made her cry upon 'the days that are no more' with ineffable longing.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“How different men were to women!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“I dare not hope. I never was fainthearted before; but I cannot believe such a creature cares for me.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently? What could it be? Why did she care for what he thought, in spite of all her pride in spite of herself? She believed that she could have borne the sense of Almighty displeasure, because He knew all, and could read her penitence, and hear her cries for help in time to come. But Mr.Thornton-why did she tremble, and hide her face in the pillow? What strong feeling had overtaking her at last?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“I am the mother that bore you, and your sorrow is my agony; and if you don't hate her, i do' Then, mother, you make me love her more. She is unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit, for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knew where, sucking [only I think she used some more recondite word] was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“It was her brother,' said Mr. Thornton to himself. 'I am glad.I may never see her again; but it is comfort-a relief-to know that much. I knew she could not be unmaidenly; and yet I yearned for conviction. Now I am glad!' It was a little golden thread running through the dark web of his present fortunes; which were growing ever gloomier and more gloomy.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“The question always is, has everything been done to make the sufferings of these exceptions as small as possible? Or, in the triumph of the crowded procession, have the helpless been trampled on, instead of being gently lifted aside out of the roadway of the conqueror, whom they have no power to accompany on his march?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“It had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its stings and contumelies, compared to the poverty that crept round and clipped the anticipation of the future down to sordid fact, and life without an atmosphere of either hope or fear.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Oh yes!' and suddenly the wintry frost-bound look of care had left Mr. Thornton's face, as if some soft summer gale had blown all anxiety away from his mind; and, though his mouth was as much compressed as before, his eyes smiled out benignly on his questioner.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Oh, my Margaret--my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead--cold as you lie there you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret--Margaret!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“He could not - say rather, he would not - deny himself the chance of the pleasure of seeing Margaret. He had no end in this but the present gratification.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence - every step of which was rich, as each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recal some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“..still to have loved her without return would have lifted you higher than all those, be they who they may, that have ever known her to love.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)