Wilkie Collins Quotes

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

3836

The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.

2159

Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources of expression can realise.

3245

Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.

4208

I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can tell, but I see some hope for her if she travels - none if she remains at home.

3376

The explanation has been written already in the three words that were many enough, and plain enough, for my confession. I loved her.

3150

Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke out as brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us…

4786

I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.

4463

Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too apt to believe that women act on reflection, too. Women do nothing of the sort. They act on impulse; and, in nine cases out of ten, they are heartily sorry for it afterward.

1858

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.

3784

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.

2375

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.

3154

The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls.

2502

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.

3968

Darker and darker, he said; farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the young - and spares me. The Pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave the closes over Love and Hope, are steps of my journey, and take me nearer and nearer to the End.

1378

If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie’s face, then, and then only, Anne Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance, the living reflections of one another.

2942

I am an average good Christian, when you don't push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you - which is a great comfort - are, in this respect, much the same as I am.

3398

The fool's crime is the crime that is found out and the wise man's crime is the crime that is not found out.

1917

If I ever meet with the man who fulfills my ideal, I shall make it a condition of the marriage settlement, that I am to have chocolate under the pillow.

4808

Dont speak of tomorrow.Let the music speak to us tonight,in a happier language than ours.

2652

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

3478

Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

4401

No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.

2960

There are three things that none of the young men of the present generation can do.They can't sit over their wine;they can't play at wist;and they can't pay a lady a compliment.

4465