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"But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: 'careful observer,' 'strong nervous English,' 'rising philosopher.'Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!"
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"The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth."

"There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the species, that we lie beyond comprehension. Our embarrassments, our sulks, our envy, our feelings of guilt, these phenomena are conveyed in Austen in a way that affords us bursts of almost magical self-recognition. The author has located words to depict a situation we thought ourselves alone in feeling, and for a few moments, we see ourselves more clearly and wish to become whom the author would have wanted us to be."

"Character in decay is the theme of the great bulk of superior fiction."

"Stories are like children. They grow in their own way."

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins."

"The lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten."

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

"Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince."

"In great literature, I become a thousand different men but still remain myself."

"I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific."
Explore more quotes by Elizabeth Gaskell

"My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal a feeling."

"Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom."

"And so she shuddered away from the threat of his enduring love. What did he mean? Had she not the power to daunt him? She would see. It was more daring than became a man to threaten her."

"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!'"

"My father once made us,' she began, 'keep a diary, in two columns; on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people rather a sad way of telling their lives,' (a tear dropped upon my hand at these words) - 'I don't mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected."

"Her mouth was wide; no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a 'yes' and 'no', and 'an't please you, sir'."

"Oh! that look of love!' continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. 'And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me."
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