Top 100 Wilkie Collins Quotes
#1. Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you?
Wilkie Collins
#2. I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.
Wilkie Collins
#3. Accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with.
Wilkie Collins
#4. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#5. Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.
Wilkie Collins
#6. People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves - among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege.
Wilkie Collins
#9. The grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality.
Wilkie Collins
#10. If you will look about you (which most people won't do)," says Sergeant Cuff, "you will see that the nature of a man's tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man's business.
Wilkie Collins
#11. I found out after reading quite a lot of it that it is not rated very high. He has a very descriptive way of writing but also lengthy. May not want to finish!!!!! This was his 1sr and only try ast Historical Fiction!
Wilkie Collins
#12. May I ask a question, doctor? Is she pining in this close place, too? When her sister comes, will her sister take her away?
Wilkie Collins
#13. The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Wilkie Collins
#14. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#15. Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.
Wilkie Collins
#16. What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our moserable little stage!
Wilkie Collins
#17. Now, Betteredge, exert those sharp wits of yours, and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel's instructions point!" I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort; and they consequently muddled it all
Wilkie Collins
#18. It was cold and barren. It was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence was far from me. The charm of her voice no longer murmured in my ear.
Wilkie Collins
#19. The English intellect is sound, so far as it goes,but it has one grave defect
it is always cautious in the wrong place.
Wilkie Collins
#20. The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.
Wilkie Collins
#21. But you make allowances for women; we all talk nonsense. Good
Wilkie Collins
#22. How much happier we should be,' she thought to herself sadly, 'if we never grew up!
Wilkie Collins
#23. Well may your heart believe the truths I tell; 'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.
Wilkie Collins
#24. You don't have to speak at all
I know what you'd say ...
- Laura
Wilkie Collins
#25. No woman can resist admiration and presents
especially presents, provided they happen to be just the thing she wants. He was sharp enough to know that
most men are. Naturally he wanted something in return
all men do
Wilkie Collins
#26. We meet as mortal enemies hereafter - let us, like gallant gentlemen, exchange polite attentions in the meantime.
Wilkie Collins
#27. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#28. I am not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.
Wilkie Collins
#29. Every human institution (Justice included) will stretch a little, if only you pull it in the right way.
Wilkie Collins
#30. It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand.
Wilkie Collins
#31. The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.
Wilkie Collins
#32. I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it out while it was young.
Wilkie Collins
#33. Tell him next, that crimes cause their own detection. There's another bit of copy-book morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug!
Wilkie Collins
#34. The explanation has been written already in the three words that were many enough, and plain enough, for my confession. I loved her.
Wilkie Collins
#35. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#36. Leave me my delusion, dearest! I must have that to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have nothing else!
Wilkie Collins
#37. The mountain-path of Action is no longer a path for me; my future hope pauses with my present happiness in the shadowed valley of Repose.
Wilkie Collins
#38. Perhaps I have dwelt too long already on the little story of our parting from home? I can only say, in excuse, that my heart is full of it; and what is not in my heart my pen won't write.
Wilkie Collins
#39. Did you fall asleep?"
"No. I couldn't sleep that night."
"You were restless?"
"I was thinking of you."
The answer almost unmanned me. Something in the tone, even more than in the words, went straight to my heart. It was only after pausing a little first that I was able to go on.
Wilkie Collins
#40. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#41. I am thinking,' he remarked quietly, 'whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.
Wilkie Collins
#42. It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am right.
Wilkie Collins
#43. Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.
Wilkie Collins
#44. Oh, my young friends and fellow sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy! Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment's notice!
Wilkie Collins
#45. The servants were so surprised at seeing me that they hurried and bustled absurdly, and made all sorts of annoying mistakes. Even the butler, who was old enough to have known better, brought me a bottle of port that was chilled.
Wilkie Collins
#46. How inestimably important in its moral results - and therefore how praiseworthy in itself - is the act of eating and drinking! The social virtues center in the stomach. A man who is not a better husband, father, and brother after dinner than before is, digestively speaking, an incurably vicious man.
Wilkie Collins
#47. He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.
Wilkie Collins
#48. I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading,
Wilkie Collins
#49. A young man who plays his part in society by looking on in green spectacles, and listening with a sickly smile, may be a prodigy of intellect and a mine of virtue, but he is hardly, perhaps, the right sort of man to have at a picnic.
Wilkie Collins
#50. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#51. Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle either of us - and yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone
Wilkie Collins
#52. Evil report, with time and chance to help it, travels patiently, and travels far.
Wilkie Collins
#53. I must really rest a little before I can get on any farther. When I have reclined for a few minutes, with my eyes closed, and when Louis has refreshed my poor aching temples with a little eau-de-Cologne, I may be able to proceed.
Wilkie Collins
#54. Through all the ways of our unintelligible world, the trivial and the terrible walk hand in hand together.
Wilkie Collins
#55. Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world; let's hope it will be made up to them in another.
Wilkie Collins
#56. In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.
Wilkie Collins
#57. Some to business, some to pleasure take, But every woman is at heart a rake.'" "The
Wilkie Collins
#58. Grief has this that is noble in it - it accepts all sympathy, come whence it may. She
Wilkie Collins
#60. We don't want genius in this country unless it is accompanied by respectability.
Wilkie Collins
#61. The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time.
Wilkie Collins
#62. I have degraded myself by ever thinking of him as my husband.
Wilkie Collins
#63. I should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the woman who has lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself of all my energies, who has become the one guiding influence that now directs the purpose of my life.
Wilkie Collins
#64. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#65. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas.
Wilkie Collins
#66. I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.
Wilkie Collins
#67. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn't exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you!
you have married a monster.
Wilkie Collins
#68. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#69. Some of us rush through life and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life.
Wilkie Collins
#70. To be told, for the first time, in this place. As the Judge
Wilkie Collins
#71. Very strange!" he said to himself, vacantly. "It's like a scene in a novel - it's like nothing in real life." He
Wilkie Collins
#72. Even baldness, when it is only baldness over the forehead (as in his case), is rather becoming than not in a man, for it heightens the head and adds to the intelligence of the face.
Wilkie Collins
#73. I have heard, as everybody else has, of a spirit's haunting a house ; but I have had my own personal experience of a house's haunting a spirit.
Wilkie Collins
#74. The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk.
Wilkie Collins
#75. After the lapse of a minute, I roused my manhood, and opened the door.
Wilkie Collins
#76. Marian and I avoided all further reference to that other subject, which by her consent and mine, was not to be mentioned between us yet. It was not the less present in our minds
it was rather kept alive in them by the restraint which we had imposed on ourselves
Wilkie Collins
#77. The only hope I have left for you hangs on a great doubt - the doubt whether we are, or are not, the masters of our own destinies. It may be that mortal free-will can conquer mortal fate; and that going, as we all do, inevitably to death, we go inevitably to nothing that is before death.
Wilkie Collins
#78. If it's any comfort to you, collar me again. You don't in the least know how to do it; but I'll overlook your awkwardness in consideration of your feelings.
Wilkie Collins
#79. I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.
Wilkie Collins
#80. I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools.
Wilkie Collins
#81. She left the window - and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps - and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer - and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words failed me to express), The lady is ugly!
Wilkie Collins
#82. He has that quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest, in listening to a woman, which, say what we may, we can none of us resist.
Wilkie Collins
#83. Where is the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed - but what does our own experiences say in answer to books?
Wilkie Collins
#84. There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace.
Wilkie Collins
#85. I wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects, like me?
Wilkie Collins
#86. The sketch of the summer-house which she had given me on the morning of our farewell, and which had never been separated from me since, was the birthday of our first hope.
Wilkie Collins
#87. I did what you would probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed upon me - and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite clever enough to perform it.
Wilkie Collins
#88. Lovely eyes in colour, lovely eyes in form - large and tender and quietly thoughtful - but beautiful above all things in the clear truthfulness of look that dwells in their inmost depths, and shines through all their changes of expression with the light of a purer and a better world.
Wilkie Collins
#89. The cook looked as if she could grill Mr. Superintendent alive on a furnace, and the other women looked as if they could eat him when he was done.
Wilkie Collins
#90. Even lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave of her. The
Wilkie Collins
#91. Inevitably. But women, as you may have observed, have no principles. My family don't feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means employed to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits." "I
Wilkie Collins
#92. Forgive me, dear Mr. Troy! I am very unhappy, and very unreasonable - but I am only a woman, and you must not expect too much from me.
Wilkie Collins
#93. How can you expect four women to dine together alone every day, and not quarrel?
Wilkie Collins
#94. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#95. When a sensible woman has a reasonable question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she has something to conceal.
Wilkie Collins
#96. The sad truth is, I am a martyr to my own sense of order. All untidiness, all want of system and regularity, cause me the acutest irritation. My attention is distracted, my composure is upset;
Wilkie Collins
#97. The best men are not consistent in good - why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
Wilkie Collins
#98. Nature's voice and Nature's beauty
God's soothing and purifying angels of the soul
speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at such times as these.
Wilkie Collins
#100. The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture to describe as the unsought self-possession, which is a sure sign of good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere else in the civilized world.
Wilkie Collins
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