Nancy Trowbridge

“Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously--the pharisee ostentatiously--the simple-hearted humbly--the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion--given an equally good digestion.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another--this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man--while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!--how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words--'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself.”
― Elizabeth Gaskellbeth Gaskell, North and South

“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, North and South

“It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South