Quotes From "Ruth" By Elizabeth Gaskell

By degrees they spoke of education , and the book-learning that forms one part of it; and the result was that Ruth determined to get up early all throughout the bright summer mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be give to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false. Elizabeth Gaskell

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

She then thought the land enchanted into everlasting brightness and happiness; she fancied, then, that into a region so lovely no bale or woe could enter, but would be charmed away and disappear before the sight of the glorious guardian mountains. Now she knew the truth, that earth has no barrier which avails against agony. Elizabeth Gaskell

The traditions of . bygone times, even to the smallest social particular, enable one to understand more clearly the circumstances with contributed to the formation of character. The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes - when an inward necessity for independent individual action arises, which is superior to all outward conventionalities. Therefore it is well to know what were the chains of daily domestic habit which were the natural leading-strings of our forefathers before they learnt to go alone. Elizabeth Gaskell

With a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red cam above the horizon, and immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking the flower-buds to the life of another day. Elizabeth Gaskell

…I have never seen mountains before, and they fill me and oppress me so much that I could not sleep; I must keep awake this first night, and see that they don’t fall on the earth and overwhelm it." [- Miss Benson to her brother, Thurstan] Elizabeth Gaskell

The temptation is too strong for me. Oh, Lord! where is Thy peace that I believed in, in my childhood? — that I hear people speaking of now, as if it hushed up the troubles of life, and had not to be sought for — sought for, as with tears of blood! [-Jemima, chapter 26, pg. 275] Elizabeth Gaskell

...somehow, the very errors and faults of one individual served to call out the higher excellencies in another, and so they re-acted upon each other, and the result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace. Elizabeth Gaskell

Miss Benson had the power; which some people have, of carrying her wishes through to fulfillment; her will was strong, her sense was excellent, and people yielded to her — they did not know why. Elizabeth Gaskell

Her thoughts are full of other things just now; and people have such different ways of showing feeling: some by silence, some by words. Elizabeth Gaskell

Ask , and it shall be given until you. That is no vain or untried promise, Ruth! Elizabeth Gaskell

Jemima was not pretty, the flatness and shortness of her face made her almost plain; yet most people looked twice at her expressive countenance, at the eyes which flamed or melted at every trifle, at the rich colour which came at every expressed emotion into her usually sallow face, at the faultless teeth which made her smile like a sunbeam. Elizabeth Gaskell

…everything may be done in a right way or a wrong; the right way is to do it as well as we can, as in God’s sight; the wrong is to do it in a self-seeking spirit, which either leads us to neglect it to follow out some device of our own before and after the doing. Elizabeth Gaskell