Quote

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

Elizabeth Gaskell

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Elizabeth Gaskell
Age: 54 †
Born: 1810
Born: September 29
Died: 1865
Died: January 12
Biographer
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Author of Mary Barton
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
Mrs. Gaskell
née Stevenson
Though
Sat
State
Cake
Making
Pretending
States
Sent
Bread
Cakes
Busy
Sponge
Knew
Sponges
Morning
Tea

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How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!
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Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.
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She never called her son by any name but John 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.
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Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.
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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.
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He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words.
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I wish I could love people as you do, Molly!' 'Don't you?' said the other, in surprise. 'No. A good number of people love me, I believe, or at least they think they do but I never seem to care much for any one. I do believe I love you, little Molly, whom I have only known for ten days, better than any one.
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Man, through all ages of revolving time, Unchanging man, in every varying clime, Deems his own land of every land the pride, Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside Home, the spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
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He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, and leanness goes a great way towards gentility.
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He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it.
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The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.
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I could wish there were a God, if it were only to ask him to bless thee.
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Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.
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And so she shuddered away from the threat of his enduring love. What did he mean? Had she not the power to daunt him? She would see. It was more daring than became a man to threaten her.
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. . . it seemed to me that where others had prayed before to their God, in their joy or in their agony, was of itself a sacred place.
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Yet it was very difficult to separate her interpretation, and keep it distinct from his meaning.
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He loved her, and would love her and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.
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A great matter calls her son with terms like deal, and love.
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How different men were to women!
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Oh dear! A drunken infidel weaver! said Mr. Hale to himself.
Elizabeth Gaskell