Elizabeth Gaskell

If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her.

“A man,” as one of them observed to me once, “is so in the way in the house!”

The softness of the day tempted forth the young green leaves, which almost visibly fluttered into life; and the willows, which that morning had had only a brown reflection in the water below, were now of that tender gray-green which blends so delicately with the spring harmony of colours.

It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.

And if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent, “What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?”

He was reminded of one of the daily little actions, which acquire such power when they have been performed for the last time, by one we love.

Your bonny face, my lass, makes the day look brighter.

We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything that they wished.

Lightly said, lightly answered.

Boy and man, he’s the noblest, stoutest heart I ever knew.

“I prefer Dr. Johnson to Mr. Boz.”

But he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are even now enduring, resisting, sinking under?

I could wish there were a God, if it were only to ask Him to bless thee.

“I’ll do it as you tell me, ma’am,” said Martha; “but I like lads best.”

Considerations of modesty or propriety never checked her utterance of a good thing.

Cromwell would have made a capital mill-owner, Miss Hale.

“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matty softly, as we settled ourselves in the countinghouse. “I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!”

Real meekness of character is called out by experience of kindness.

He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it.

Paris has much to answer for if it’s killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived.