Top 100 Wilkie Collins Quotes
#1. I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.
Ross Macdonald
#2. When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.
Sonia Rumzi
#3. 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
#4. I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.
Wilkie Collins
#5. You hear more than enough of married people living together miserably. Here is an example to the contrary. Let it be a warning to some of you, and an encouragement to others. In the meantime, I will go on with my story.
Wilkie Collins
#6. 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
#7. He was in that state of highly respectful sulkiness which is peculiar to English servants.
Wilkie Collins
#8. 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
#9. That gate," said the under-gardener, turning with great deliberation towards the south, and embracing the whole of that part of England with one comprehensive sweep of his arm. "Curious,
Wilkie Collins
#10. Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.
Wilkie Collins
#11. The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges of the heath; and the view of London below me had sunk into a black gulf in the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my mother's cottage.
Wilkie Collins
#12. Only give a woman love, and there is nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.
Wilkie Collins
#13. Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil,
Wilkie Collins
#14. 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
#15. If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond - bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man.
Wilkie Collins
#18. The deserts of Arabia are innocent of our civilised desolation-the ruins of Palestine are incapable of our modern gloom!
Wilkie Collins
#19. 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
#20. She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.
Wilkie Collins
#21. Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career?
Wilkie Collins
#22. 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
#23. This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
Wilkie Collins
#24. The human heart is unsearchable. Who is to fathom it?
Wilkie Collins
#25. 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
#26. One after another, they were examined. One after another, they proved to have nothing to say
and said it (so far as the women were concerned) at great length ...
Wilkie Collins
#27. 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
#28. You musn't talk of a young lady *belonging* to anybody, as if she was a piece of furniture, or money in the Three per Cent, or something of that sort.
Wilkie Collins
#29. The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Wilkie Collins
#30. And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.
Wilkie Collins
#31. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. The upshot of it was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law.
Wilkie Collins
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. In my youth, I should have chafed and fretted under the irritation of my own unreasonable state of mind. In my age, I knew better, and went out philosophically to walk it off.
Wilkie Collins
#40. 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
#41. But you make allowances for women; we all talk nonsense. Good
Wilkie Collins
#43. So the ghostly figure which has haunted these pages, as it haunted my life, goes down into the impenetrable gloom. Like a shadow she first came to me in the loneliness of the night. Like a shadow she passes away in the loneliness of the dead
Wilkie Collins
#44. How much happier we should be,' she thought to herself sadly, 'if we never grew up!
Wilkie Collins
#45. Well may your heart believe the truths I tell; 'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.
Wilkie Collins
#46. Let Lady Glyde's maid come in, Louis. Stop! Do her shoes creak?
I was obliged to ask the question. Creaking shoes invariably upset me for the day. I was resigned to see the Young Person, but I was NOT resigned to let the Young Person's shoes upset me. There is a limit even to my endurance.
Wilkie Collins
#47. You don't have to speak at all
I know what you'd say ...
- Laura
Wilkie Collins
#48. 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
#50. We meet as mortal enemies hereafter - let us, like gallant gentlemen, exchange polite attentions in the meantime.
Wilkie Collins
#51. 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
#52. were we two following our widely parted roads towards one point in the mysterious future, at which we were to meet once more?
Wilkie Collins
#53. I am not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.
Wilkie Collins
#54. Every human institution (Justice included) will stretch a little, if only you pull it in the right way.
Wilkie Collins
#55. It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand.
Wilkie Collins
#56. The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.
Wilkie Collins
#57. 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
#58. We both wanted money. Immense necessity! Universal want! Is there a civilised human being who does not feel for us? How insensible must that man be! Or how rich!
Wilkie Collins
#59. 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
#60. Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the house-keeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way.
Wilkie Collins
#61. I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
Wilkie Collins
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Leave me my delusion, dearest! I must have that to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have nothing else!
Wilkie Collins
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. I used to attend scientific experiments when I was a girl at school. They invariably ended in an explosion. If Mr. Jennings will be so very kind, I should like to be warned of the explosion this time. With a view to getting it over, if possible, before I go to bed.
Wilkie Collins
#68. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am right.
Wilkie Collins
#73. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. It will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.
Wilkie Collins
#79. But I am a just man, even to my enemy - and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer brains than I thought them.
Wilkie Collins
#80. The rod of iron with which he rules her never appears in company
it is a private rod, and is always kept upstairs.
Wilkie Collins
#81. 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.
Wilkie Collins
#82. It is the nature of truth to struggle to the light.
Wilkie Collins
#83. He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.
Wilkie Collins
#85. I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading,
Wilkie Collins
#86. Tears are scientifically described as a Secretion. I can understand that a secretion may be healthy or unhealthy, but I cannot see the interest of a secretion from a sentimental point of view.
Wilkie Collins
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. Evil report, with time and chance to help it, travels patiently, and travels far.
Wilkie Collins
#91. She was unlike most girls of her age, in this
that she had ideas of her own.
Wilkie Collins
#92. IT wanted little more than a fortnight to Christmas; but the weather showed no signs yet of the frost and snow, conventionally associated with the coming season. The atmosphere was unnaturally warm, and the old year was dying feebly in sapping rain and enervating mist.
Wilkie Collins
#93. 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
#94. Ah! How much happiness there is in life if we will only have the patience to wait for it.
Wilkie Collins
#95. Through all the ways of our unintelligible world, the trivial and the terrible walk hand in hand together.
Wilkie Collins
#96. I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her. Miss Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over her arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was looking at me attentively.
Wilkie Collins
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. Some to business, some to pleasure take, But every woman is at heart a rake.'" "The
Wilkie Collins
#100. Grief has this that is noble in it - it accepts all sympathy, come whence it may. She
Wilkie Collins
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