Top 380 Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 3 of 8

101. “She tried to comfort herself with the idea, that what he imagined her to be, did not alter the fact of what she was. But it was a truism, a phantom, and broke down under the weight of her regret. She.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

102. “Oh, don’t be so wise and stupid.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

103. “I sometimes think he’s half a woman himself, he spends so much money and is so unreasonable.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

104. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

105. “But when she got into her own, she locked the door, and sate down to cry unwonted tears.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

106. “My precept is, ‘Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something.’” “Not excluding mischief,” said Margaret, smiling faintly through her tears. “By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

107. “A girl in love will do a good deal.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

108. “She used to sit long hours upon the beach, gazing intently on the waves as they chafed with perpetual motion against the pebbly shore, – or she looked out upon the more distant heave, and sparkle against the sky, and heard, without being conscious of hearing, the eternal psalm, which went up continually.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

109. “With a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red cam above the horizon, and immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking the flower-buds to the life of another day.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

110. “But I’m clear about this, when God gives a blessing to be enjoyed, He gives it with a duty to be done; and the duty of the happy is to help the suffering to bear their woe.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

111. “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...”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

112. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

113. “There have been such strange unexpected changes in my life during these last two years, that I feel more than ever that it is not worth while to calculate too closely what I should do if any future event took place. I try to think only upon the present.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

114. “Miss Benson had the power; which some people have, of carrying her wishes through to fulfillment; her will was strong, her sense was excellent, and people yielded to her – they did not know why.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

115. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

116. “As far as she could see, her life was ordained to be lonely, and she must subdue her nature to her life, and, if possible, bring the two into harmony. When she could employ herself in fiction, all was comparatively well. The characters were her companions in the quiet hours, which she spent utterly alone, unable often to stir out of doors for many days together.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

117. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

118. “He felt every day more and more certain that she, and she alone, could make him happy.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

119. “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?”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

120. “It seems strange to think, that what gives us most hope for the future should be called Dolores, said Margaret.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

121. “A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

122. “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

123. “Yet is was very difficult to separate her interpretation, and keep it distinct from his meaning.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

124. “The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

125. “Margaret found that the indifferent, careless conversations of one who, however kind, was not too warm and anxious a sympathizer, did her good.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

126. “She handed him his cup of tea with the proud air of an unwilling slave...”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

127. “It was a stinging pleasure to be in the room with her, and feel her presence.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

128. “He was lashing himself again into an impotent rage, painful to a son to witness.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

129. “He had married a delicate fine London lady; it was one of those perplexing marriages of which one cannot understand the reasons.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

130. “It is part of His plan to send suffering to bring out a higher good; but surely it’s also part of His plan that as much of the burden of suffering as can be should be lightened by those whom it is His pleasure to make happy and content in their own circumstances.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

131. “Many a one is not well for a time; and with good advice gets better and stronger than ever.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

132. “I am punished. Only let me hope.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

133. “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

134. “Our Lord Jesus was not above letting folk minister to Him, for he knew how happy it makes one to do aught for another. It’s the happiest work on earth.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

135. “Daniel was very like a child in all the parts of his character. He was strongly affected by whatever was present, and apt to forget the absent. He acted on impulse, and too often had reason to be sorry for it; but he hated his sorrow too much to let it teach him wisdom for the future.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

136. “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

137. “She never called her son by any name but John; ‘love’ and ‘dear’, and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

138. “If all the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to deceive, – if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives in peril, – if no one should ever know of her truth or her falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by, straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth for evermore.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

139. “It was one of Mrs. Hale’s fitful days, when everything was a difficulty and a hardship; and Mr Lennox’s appearance took this shape, although secretly she felt complimented by his thinking it worthwhile to call.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

140. “I’m sure it was not wrong in morals, whatever it might be in judgement.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

141. “Her mouth was wide; no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and ‘an’t please you, sir’.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

142. “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

143. “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

144. “For months past, all her own personal cares and troubles had had to be stuffed away into a dark cupboard; but now she had leisure to take them out, and mourn over them, and study their nature, and seek the true method of subduing them into the elements of peace. All these weeks she had been conscious of their existence in a dull kind of way, though they were hidden out of sight. Now, once for all she would consider them, and appoint to each of them its right work in her life.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

146. “I declare I don’t know which of her three lovers she may not summon at the very last moment to act the part of bridegroom. I’m determined to be surprised at nothing; and will give her away with a good grace to whoever comes.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

147. “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

148. “Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously – the pharisee ostentatiously – the simple-hearted humbly – the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion – given an equally good digestion.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

149. “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

150. “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!”

— Elizabeth Gaskell