Top 380 Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “I am not good, and I told you so. Somehow I cannot forgive her for her neglect of me as a child, when I would have clung to her. Besides, I hardly ever heard from her when I was at school. And I know she put a stop to my coming over to her wedding. I saw the letter she wrote to Madame Lefevre. A child should be brought up with its parents, if it is to think them infallible when it grows up.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

302. “About Emily : “she never showed regard to any human creature; all her love was reserved for animals”.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

303. “I do not know whether I am brave or not till I am tried...”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

304. “He swept off his business right and left that day. It seemed as though his deep mortification of yesterday, and the stunned purposeless course of the hours afterwards, had cleared away all the mists from his intellect. He felt his power and revelled in it. He could almost defy his heart. If he had known it, he could have sang the song of the miller who lived by the river Dee: – “I care for nobody – Nobody cares for me.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

305. “His was not the poor vanity that thinks more of the possible mortification of a refusal than of the precious jewel of a bride that may be won.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

306. “But how does your ladyship explain away her meetings with Mr Preston in all sorts of unlikely and open-air places?′ asked Miss Browning, who, to do her justice, would have been only too glad to join Molly’s partisans, if she could have preserved her character for logical deduction at the same time.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

307. “She had cast herself on the ground – that natural throne for violent sorrow – and leant up against the old moss-grown seat; sometimes burying her face in her hands; sometimes clasping them together, as if by the tight painful grasp of her fingers she could deaden mental suffering.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

308. “I may be the Cinderella to put on the slipper after all.′ Margaret.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

309. “We found out that we mutually disliked each other, and were contented with the discovery. If people are worth anything, this sort of non-liking is a very good beginning of friendship. Every good quality is revealed naturally and slowly, and is a pleasant surprise.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

310. “The truth had entered his soul before this, and he knew that no doctor, be he ever so cunning, could, with all his striving, put the breath into that body again.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

311. “But courage, little heart. We will turn back, and by God’s help we may find the lost path.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

312. “For indeed he had got into that kind of exaggerated susceptibility with regard to his wife’s faults, which may be best typified by the state of bodily irritation that is produced by the constant recurrence of any particular noise: those who are brought within hearing of it, are apt to be always on the watch for the repetition, if they are once made to notice it, and are in an irritable state of nerves.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

313. “So the visit was deferred to that more convenient season which is so often too late.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

314. “I don’t think I am pretty,′ thought Molly, as she turned away from the glass; ‘and yet I am not sure.’ She would have been sure, if, instead of inspecting herself with such solemnity, she had smiled her own sweet merry smile, and called out the gleam of her teeth, and the charm of her dimples.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

315. “All that he gained in return for his sixpenny omnibus ride, was a more vivid conviction that there never was, never could be, any one like Margaret; that she did not love him and never would; but that she – no! nor the whole world – should never hinder him from loving her.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

316. “Bear up, brave heart!”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

317. “This household had many failings: they were but human, and, with all their loving desire to bring their lives into harmony with the will of God, they often erred and fell short; but, somehow, the very errors and faults of one individual served to call out higher excellences in another, and so they reacted upon each other, and the result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

318. “Both were not mental but physical illnesses. She was well aware of this, and would ask how that mended matters, as the feeling was there all the same, and was not removed by knowing the cause. She had a larger religious toleration than a person would have who had never questioned, and the manner of recommending religion was always that of offering comfort, not fiercely enforcing a duty.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

319. “But all laws which depend for their enforcement upon informers and fines, become inert from the odiousness of the machinery.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

320. “He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones; and leanness goes a great way to gentility. His complexion was sallow, and his hair black;.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

321. “That’s a nice girl of Gibson’s,′ quoth he to himself. ‘But what a tight hold the wench got of the notion of his marrying again! One had need be on one’s guard as to what one says before her. To think of her never having thought of the chance of a step-mother. To be sure, a step-mother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

322. “Don’t repeat evil on any authority unless you can do some good by speaking about it.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

323. “People admire talent, and talk about their admiration. But they value common sense without talking about it, and often without knowing it.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

324. “Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Carson had ended his review, and began to listen to what was going on. He finished his breakfast, got up, and pulled five shillings out of his pocket, which he gave to Wilson as he passed him, for the “poor fellow.” He went past quickly, and calling for his horse, mounted gaily, and rode away.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

325. “Sometimes people wondered that parents so handsome should have a daughter who was so far from regularly beautiful; not beautiful at all, was occasionally said.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

326. “Wild, strong hearts, and powerful minds, were hidden under an enforced propriety and regularity of demeanour and expression, just as their faces had been concealed by their father, under his stiff, unchanging mask.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

327. “Some of my greatest difficulties lie in things that would appear to you comparatively trivial. I find it so hard to repel the rude familiarity of children. I find it so difficult to ask either servants or mistress for anything I want, however much I want it. It is less pain for me to endure the greatest inconvenience than to go into the kitchen to request its removal. I am a fool. Heaven knows I cannot help it!”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

328. “But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people friends quicker than anything, I think.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

329. “Hollingford speculated much on which young lady would become Mrs Gibson, and was rather sorry when the talk about possibilities, and the gossip about probabilities with regard to the handsome young surgeon’s marriage, ended in the most natural manner in the world, by his marrying his predecessor’s niece.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

330. “One can’t account for everything,′ said Lady Harriet, a little impatiently, for reason was going hard against her. ‘But I choose to have faith in Molly Gibson. I’m sure she’s not done anything very wrong.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

331. “The mourner before him was no longer the employer; a being of another race, eternally placed in antagonistic attitude; going through the world glittering like gold, with a stony heart within, which knew no sorrow but through the accidents of Trade; no longer the enemy, the oppressor, but a very poor and desolate old man.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

332. “As to th’ language, I’m welly used to it; it dunnot matter to me. I’m not nesh mysel’ when I’m put out. It were th’ fact that I were na wanted theer, no more nor ony other place, as I minded.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

333. “Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future. They.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

334. “I can’t bear to part with you, and yet I am miserable with anxiety as long as you stop here.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

335. “Oh, of course,” he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. “There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world’s mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little satisfaction in life.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

336. “Mrs. Gibson, it is true, was ready to go over the ground as many times as any one liked; but her words were always like ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts. Anybody might have used them, and, with a change of proper names, they might have served to describe any ball. She repeatedly used the same language in speaking about it, till Molly knew the sentences and their sequence even to irritation.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

337. “It is well for us that we live at the present time, when everybody is logical and consistent.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

338. “When we are heavy-laden in our hearts, it falls in better with our humor to reveal our case in our own way and our own time.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

339. “I grieve to say that I possess no portrait of either of my sisters.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

340. “I’m not a fool; and if I was, folk ought to ha’ taught me how to be wise after their fashion. I could mappen ha’ learnt, if any one had tried to teach me.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

341. “It was rather dull for Margaret after dinner. She was glad when the gentlemen came, not merely because she caught her father’s eye to brighten her sleepiness up; but because she could listen to something larger and grander than the petty interests which the ladies had been talking about.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

342. “He had not loved her without gaining that instinctive knowledge of what capabilities were in her.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

343. “Only remember, Miss Phoebe, it’s you and I against the world, in defence of a distressed damsel.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

344. “I have been so curt, so abrupt, so abominably dull, that I’ll answer for it he thinks me worthy to be a man.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

345. “He might despise her, but the woman whom he had once loved should be kept from shame; and.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

346. “She had never before ventured into the world, and did not know how common and universal is the custom of picking to pieces those with whom we have just been associating; and so it pained her.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

347. “Give me a wise man of science in love! No one beats him in folly.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

348. “A man is to me a higher and a completer being than a gentleman.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

349. “Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as filled with careless contentment. -Chapter 1.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell

350. “Very well,′ said Roger. ‘Tell them both as strongly as you can how I regret your prohibition. I see I must submit. But if I don’t come back, I’ll haunt you for having been so cruel.’ ‘Come, I like that. Give me a wise man of science in love! No one beats him in folly. Good-by.”

— Elizabeth Gaskell