Book detail: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books) is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell encompasses novels, short stories, and biographies, featuring classic titles such as 'Mary Barton,' 'North and South,' and 'Wives and Daughters.' It provides a comprehensive overview of Gaskell's writing style and thematic concerns.
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“How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“What's the use of watching? A watched pot never boils.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“All the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and desert place to a mother when her only child is absent.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. "And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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?”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“What could he mean by speaking so, as if I were always thinking that he cared for me, when I know he does not; he cannot. ... But I won't care for him. I surely am mistress enough of myself to control this wild, strange, miserable feeling”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“. . . it seemed to me that where others had prayed before to their God, in their joy or in their agony, was of itself a sacred place.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Those who are happy and successful themselves are too apt to make light of the misfortunes of others.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“She never called her son by any name but John; 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through,—to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“I wish I could love people as you do, Molly!' 'Don't you?' said the other, in surprise. 'No. A good number of people love me, I believe, or at least they think they do; but I never seem to care much for any one. I do believe I love you, little Molly, whom I have only known for ten days, better than any one.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“But with the increase of serious and just ground of complaint, a new kind of patience had sprung up in her Mother's mind. She was gentle and quiet in intense bodily suffering, almost in proportion as she had been restless and depressed when there had been no real cause for grief.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“He could remember all about it now; the pitiful figure he must have cut; the absurd way in which he had gone and done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world; and had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if he ever did make such a fool of himself.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Oh dear! A drunken infidel weaver! said Mr. Hale to himself.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Come! Poor little heart! Be cheery and brave. We'll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown off and left desolate.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“He shook hands with Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“A girl in love will do a good deal.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“She thought in would be awkward for both to be brought into conscious collision; and fancied that, from her being on a low seat at first, and now standing behind her father, he had overlooked her in his haste. As if he did not feel the consciousness of her presence all over, though his eyes had never rested on her!”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“It seemed as though he gave way all at once; he was so languid that he could not control his thoughts; they would wander to her; they would bring back the scene,- not of his repulse and rejection the day before but the looks, the actions of the day before that. He went along the crowded streets mechanically, winding in and out among the people, but never seeing them, -almost sick with longing for that one half-hour-that one brief space of time when she clung to him, and her heart beat against his-to come once again.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“I dare say there's many a woman makes as sad a mistake as I have done, and only finds it out too late.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Nevertheless, his moustachios are splendid.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“But the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal leafiness - the warm odours of flowers and herb came sweet upon the sense.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young; afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive." (Mr. Bell)”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“I could wish there were a God, if it were only to ask him to bless thee.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Oh, I can't describe my home. It is home, and I can't put its charm into words”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“He loved her, and would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“If you dare to injure her in the least, I will await you where no policeman can step in between. And God shall judge between us two.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“One may be clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“I am so tired - so tired of being of being whirled on through all these phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place; it is like the circle in which the victims of earthly passion eddy continually.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)