What do you expect–not indifference or ingratitude?’ (-Miss Benson) ‘It is better not to expect or calculate consequences. The longer I live, the more fully I see that. Let us try simply to do right actions, without thinking of the feelings they are to call out in others. We know that no holy or self-denying effort can fall to the ground vain and useless; but the sweep of eternity is large, and God along knows when the effect is to be produced. We are trying to do right now, and to feel right; don’t let us perplex ourselves with endeavoring to map out how she should feel, or how she should show her feelings.’ (-Thurstan) . Elizabeth Gaskell
About This Quote

These quotes from Miss Benson and Thurstan both speak to the importance of not expecting a person's reaction, a person's behavior, a person's feelings. The quote by Thurstan speaks to doing our best and doing what we should do without considering the consequences. Miss Benson says it is better to not think about how someone else should feel or how someone else should behave. She recognizes that even though we try our best, there may be some things we cannot control. In these quotes, both women recognize that nothing can be truly great if it can't fulfill its purpose or if it doesn't work out to bring out the very best in the people involved.

Source: Ruth

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More Quotes By Elizabeth Gaskell
  1. One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to beloved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannotcleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have neverloved any woman before: my life has...
  2. 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.
  3. Take care. If you do not speak — I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way. Send me away at once, if I must go; — Margaret! —
  4. Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.
  5. I'll not listen to reason... reason always means what someone else has got to say.
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