Ruth

by Elizabeth Gaskell

We have dreaded men too much, and God too little, in the course we have taken.

"The world is not everything, Ruth; nor is the want of men's good opinion and esteem the highest need which man has.

Any one who has been oppressed with the weight of a vital secret for years, and much more any one the character of whose life has been stamped by one event, and that producing sorrow and shame, is naturally reserved.