Elizabeth Gaskell quotes

Elizabeth Gaskell was an English novelist and short story writer, known for her detailed portrayals of Victorian society. Her works often explored class differences, women's issues, and industrialization. She became an influential literary figure whose novels remain widely read today. Here are 18 of her quotes:

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)

A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom. (Elizabeth Gaskell)

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

Elizabeth Gaskell

It was his general plan to repress emotion by not showing the sympathy he felt.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Economy was always "elegant", and money-spending always "vulgar and ostentatious"; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied.

Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

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

Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell - Image

Occupation: British Novelist
Born: September 29, 1810
Died: November 12, 1865
Quotes count: 18
Wikipedia: Elizabeth Gaskell

Related authors

Charlotte Brontë 176

British Novelist

Joseph Delaney 16

Author

George Eliot 538

English Novelist

Emily Brontë 166

British Novelist

Jane Austen 599

British Writer

Charles Dickens 528

English Novelist

Wilkie Collins 43

English Novelist

Richard Armitage 47

British Actor

Anne Brontë 157

British Novelist

Louisa May Alcott 217

American Novelist