Top 380 Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “No one loves me, – no one cares for me, but you, mother.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

2. “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

3. “I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you don’t understand me.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

4. “What’s the use of watching? A watched pot never boils...”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

5. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

6. “As she realized what might have been, she grew to be thankful for what was.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

7. “Anticipation was the soul of enjoyment.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

9. “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

10. “But the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

12. “All sorts of thoughts cross one’s mind – it depends upon whether one gives them harbour and encouragement.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

13. “To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

14. “I won’t say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn’t me!”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

16. “How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

17. “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

18. “Waiting is far more difficult than doing.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

21. “Yes! He knew how she would love. He had not loved her without gaining that instinctive knowledge of what capabilities were in her. Her soul would walk in glorious sunlight if any man was worthy, by his power of loving, to win back her love.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

22. “I don’t like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

23. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

24. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

26. “It was not the long, bleak sunny days of spring, nor yet was it that time was reconciling her to the town of her habitation. It was that in it she had found a human interest.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

27. “So on those happy days of yore Oft as I dare to dwell once more, Still must I miss the friends so tried, Whom Death has severed from my side. But ever when true friendship binds, Spirit it is that spirit finds; In spirit then our bliss we found, In spirit yet to them I’m bound. – Uhland.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

30. “Nevertheless, his moustachios are splendid.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

31. “Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life. My theory is a sort of parody on the maxim of “Get money, my son, honestly if you can; but get money.” My precept is, “Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

33. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

34. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

37. “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

Featured in: Romance Quotes

38. “Oh, I can’t describe my home. It is home, and I can’t put its charm into words.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

39. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

41. “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

42. “Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

43. “A man is so in the way in the house.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

44. “Did I ever say an engagement was an elephant, madam?”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

45. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

46. “Mother’s love is given by God, John. It holds fast for ever and ever. A girl’s love is like a puff of smoke,-it changes with every wind.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

47. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

48. “I don’t know – I suppose because, on the very face of it, I see two classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own; I never lived in a place before where there were two sets of people always running each other down.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

49. “They forgot that the strike was in this instance the consequence of want and need, suffered unjustly, as the endurers believed; for, however insane, and without ground of reason, such was their belief, and such was the cause of their violence. It is a great truth that you cannot extinguish violence by violence. You may put it down for a time; but while you are crowing over your imaginary success, see if it does not return with seven devils worse than its former self! No.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

50. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell