AtomicQuote

Elizabeth Gaskell Quote

He spoke as if the answer were a matter of indifference to him. But it was not so. For all his pain, he longed to see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, when he thought of that gentle familiar attitude and all the attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew her picture in his mind--a longing for the very atmosphere she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal centre.

Elizabeth Gaskell

He spoke as if the answer were a matter of indifference to him. But it was not so. For all his pain, he longed to see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, when he thought of that gentle familiar attitude and all the attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew her picture in his mind--a longing for the very atmosphere she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal centre.

Tags: north and south, passion

Related Quotes

There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing ... The leaves were more gorgeous than...

Elizabeth Gaskell

There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing ... The leaves were more gorgeous than...

Tags: beauty, death, dusk, fall, garden, gardens, north and south, outside, seasons, time

The distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her laziness to have fully...

Elizabeth Gaskell

The distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her laziness to have fully...

Tags: calm, laziness, lazy, lazy day, meditation, meditative, north and south, peace

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more...

Susan Sontag

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more...

Tags: culture, north, north and south, northerners, perceptions, prejudice, regions, society, south, southerners

She is too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall be a specimen of the building of my palace.

Elizabeth Gaskell

She is too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall be a specimen of the building of my palace.

Tags: love, north and south, poetic

The more it rains and blows, the more certain we are to have him.

Elizabeth Gaskell

The more it rains and blows, the more certain we are to have him.

Tags: determination, north and south, resilience, resistance

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

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

Tags: farewell, north and south

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...

Elizabeth Gaskell

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...

Tags: north and south, passion

He swallowed down the dry choking sobs which had been heaving up from his heart hitherto ...

Elizabeth Gaskell

He swallowed down the dry choking sobs which had been heaving up from his heart hitherto ...

Tags: north and south, pride, resiliance, sadness

I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.

Elizabeth Gaskell

I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.

Tags: bessy, margaret, north and south

Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth.

Tags: north and south
About Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (née Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–1855), and Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), all of which were adapted for television by the BBC.