Quote

It had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its stings and contumelies, compared to the poverty that crept round and clipped the anticipation of the future down to sordid fact, and life without an atmosphere of either hope or fear.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hope
Round
Fear
Rounds
Clipped
Facts
Luxury
Stings
Without
Atmosphere
Crept
Time
Poverty
Sordid
Life
Either
Anticipation
Future
Royal
Fact
Compared

More quotes by Elizabeth Gaskell

Image
To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
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
Image
Miss Jenkyns wore a cravat, and a little bonnet like a jockey-cap, and altogether had the appearance of a strong-minded woman although she would have despised the modern idea of women being equal to men. Equal, indeed! she knew they were superior.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
His laws once broken, His justice and the very nature of those laws bring the immutable retribution but if we turn penitently to Him, He enables us to bear our punishment with a meek and docile heart, ‘for His mercy endureth forever.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
I would not trust a mouse to a woman if a man's judgment could be had.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive. (Mr. Bell)
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
I value my own independence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than that of having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturing me, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He might be the wisest of men, or the most powerful - I should equally rebel and resent his interference.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
He loved her, and would love her and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
How different men were to women!
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
I could wish there were a God, if it were only to ask him to bless thee.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances, not friends
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
But Mr. Hale resolved that he would not be disturbed by any such nonsensical idea so he lay awake, determining not to think about it.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
All the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and desert place to a mother when her only child is absent.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Image
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
Elizabeth Gaskell