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Elizabeth Gaskell Quotes
1810–1865 England
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (September 29 1810 – November 12 1865) was a British fiction-writer and biographer who witnessed and recorded the transformation of northern England by the Industrial Revolution. She was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson; her married name is often given in the form Mrs.
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13 quotes
A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.
Cranford (1851)
Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.
Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.
A wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.
It may be a very happy state and a little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.- Better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.
That kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations.
I'll not listen to reason…Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
Cranford (1851)
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.
It was his general plan to repress emotion by not showing the sympathy he felt.
Economy was always "elegant", and money-spending always "vulgar and ostentatious"; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied.
Cranford (1851)
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.
Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color.
Thinking more of others’ happiness than of her own was very fine; but did it not mean giving up her very individuality, quenching all the warm love, the true desires, that made her herself? Yet in this deadness lay her only comfort; so it seemed.
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