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

— Elizabeth Gaskell

I am the mother that bore you, and your sorrow is my agony; and if you don't hate her, I do'Then, mother, you make me love her more. She is unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even.

— Elizabeth Gaskell

I believe that this suffering, which Miss Hale says is impressed on the countenances of the people of Milton, is but the natural punishment of dishonestly-enjoyed pleasure, at some former period of their lives. 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

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

I dare say there's many a woman makes as sad a mistake as I have done, and only finds it out too late.

— Elizabeth Gaskell

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 honor 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

If Molly had not been so entirely loyal to her friend, she might have thought this constant brilliancy a little tiresome when brought into every-day life; it was not the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, it was rather the glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuse sand bewilders.

— Elizabeth Gaskell

If Mr. Thornton was a fool in the morning, as he assured himself at least twenty times he was, he did not grow much wiser in that afternoon. All that he gained in return for his six penny omnibus ride, was a more vivid conviction that there never was, never could be, anyone 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

If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies--mother, I can't speak of what I shall feel if she dies." His voice was choked in his throat.

— Elizabeth Gaskell

… I have never seen mountains before, and they fill me and oppress me so much that I could not sleep; I must keep awake this first night, and see that they don’t fall on the earth and overwhelm it." [- Miss Benson to her brother, Thurston]

— Elizabeth Gaskell