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"He could remember all about it now; the pitiful figure he must have cut; the absurd way in which he had gone and done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world; and had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if he ever did make such a fool of himself."
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"Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds."

"Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she (Mrs Winterson) was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her."

"Scent is the strongest tie to memory."

"The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before."
Explore more quotes by Elizabeth Gaskell

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

"I always said a good despotism was the best form of government, and I am twice as much in favour of it now I see what a quorum is!"

"He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her ' while he was jealous of her ' while he renounced her ' he loved her sorely, in spite of himself."

"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,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion."

"Ay! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him.- He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? what sort of master is he? - Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hindlegs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton."

"She continued her own studies, principally attending to German, and to Literature; and every Sunday she went alone to the German and English chapels. Her walks too were solitary, and principally taken in the allée défendue, where she was secure from intrusion. This solitude was a perilous luxury to one of her temperament; so liable as she was to morbid and acute mental suffering."

"She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, 'All are shadows!-all are passing!-all is past!"

"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."

"It might, or it might not. There's two opinons to go settling that point. But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and not truth to me unless I know the meaning o' the words."
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