Elizabeth Gaskell quotes:

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

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

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

Oh!s little bird told us,' said Miss Browning. Molly knew that little bird from her childhood, and had always hated it, and longed to wring its neck. Why could not people speak out and say that they did not mean to give up the name of their informant?"

But Mr. Hale resolved that he would not be disturbed by any such nonsensical idea; so he lay awake, determining not to think about it.

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

Madam your wife and I didn't hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me.

The cloud never comes from the quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it.

A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.

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.

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

Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!' 'Not good enough! Don't mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.

North and South has both met and made kind o' friends in this big smoky place.

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."

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.

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.

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

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.

There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.

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.

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.

He loved her, and would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.

He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, and leanness goes a great way towards gentility.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Aye, aye! good-natured, jolly, full of fun; there are a number of other names for the good qualities the devil leaves his children, as bait to catch gudgeons with. D'ye think folk could be led astray by one who was every way bad?"

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."

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.

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

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.

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)

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

Love me as I am, sweet one, for I shall never be better.

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

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.

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.

Dixon was not unconscious of this awed reverence which was given to her; nor did she dislike it; it flattered her as much as Louis the Fourteenth was flattered by his courtiers shading their eyes from the dazzling light of his presence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

... that kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations ...

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...

. . . 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.

We do not look for reason for logic in the passionate entreaties of those who are sick unto death; we are stung with the recollection of a thousand slighted opportunities of fulfilling the wishes of those who will soon pass away from among us: and do they ask us for the future happiness of our lives, we lay it at their feet, and will it away from us.

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.

Oh dear! A drunken infidel weaver! said Mr. Hale to himself.

I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you don't understand me.

Anticipation was the soul of enjoyment.

I value my own independence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than that of having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturing me, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He might be the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel and resent his interference...

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

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.

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

One may be clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.

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?

I look at [books] as a child looks at cakes - with glittering eyes and a watering mouth, imagining the pleasure that awaits him.

Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.

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.

I'm not saying she was very silly, but one of us was very silly and it wasn't me.

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.

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

Mr. Thorton love Margaret! Why, Margraret would never think of him, I'm sure! Such a thing has never entered her head." "Entering her heart would do.

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

...yet, 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. And she shrank and shuddered as under the fascination of some great power, repugnant to her whole previous life.She crept away, and hid from his idea. But it was of no use

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!

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.

Look back. Look back at me." Richard Armitage spoke this line in the movie North and South as he watched Miss Hale drive away in a carriage.

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

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!

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)

Nevertheless, his moustachios are splendid.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It is odd enough to see how the entrance of a person of the opposite sex into an assemblage of either men or women calms down the little discordances and the disturbance of mood.

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.

A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias.

What's the use of watching? A watched pot never boils ...

Th' longest lane will have a turning ...

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

Don't think to come over me with th' old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don't know, they ought to know.

In all disappointments sympathy is a great balm.

Waiting is far more difficult than doing.

I would not trust a mouse to a woman if a man's judgment could be had.

There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing ... The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.

There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.

Man, through all ages of revolving time, Unchanging man, in every varying clime, Deems his own land of every land the pride, Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside; Home, the spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

A man is so in the way in the house.

..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.

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

That kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations.

I take it that 'gentleman' is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as 'a man,' we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow-men, but in relation to himself,--to life--to time--to eternity.

Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.

Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.

A great matter calls her son with terms like deal, and love.

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.

He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so hard to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself - was a great fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him.

No one loves me, - no one cares for me, but you, mother.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I say Gibson, we're old friends, and you're a fool if you take anything I say as an offense. Madam your wife and I didn't hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me!

He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it.

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.

Did I ever say an engagement was an elephant, madam?