Wilkie Collins Quotes

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...

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

I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and ba...

If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie’s fac...

I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scatterin...

But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that vice, in accomplishing the va...

You musn't talk of a young lady *belonging* to anybody, as if she was a piece of furniture, or money...

If I ever meet with the man who fulfills my ideal, I shall make it a condition of the marriage settl...

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest sp...

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the gr...

Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too apt to believe that wome...

I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? - Reverend Finch's wife

Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you...

The bleak autumn wind was still blowing, and the solemn, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary a...

What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gow...

Only give a woman love, and there is nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.

Did you fall asleep?""No. I couldn't sleep that night.""You were restless?""I was thinking of you."T...

I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.

You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion t...

If you will look about you (which most people won't do)," says Sergeant Cuff, "you will see that the...

Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're ...

But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its ...

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

I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept ...

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them m...

I am an average good Christian, when you don't push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you...

He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.

I have abstained from expressing any opinion, so far," says Mr. Superintendent, with his military vo...

The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lo...

I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.

It was cold and barren. It was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence wa...

I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enor...

I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it...

mong the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I ...

Among the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I...

Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's o...

Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke out as brightly as if it had been part of...

Destiny has got the rope round my neck – and I feel it.

The books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me i...

The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used ...

There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the...

But I am a just man, even to my enemy—and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer bra...

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

Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than t...

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to...

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void i...

Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by...

I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can tell, but I see some hope for her if she t...

The first and last weakness of his life, before him again. For a moment he felt himself blinded by h...

You don’t have to speak at all—I know what you’d say…- Laura

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

It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you hav...

But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without so...

The explanation has been written already in the three words that were many enough, and plain enough,...

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void i...

Darker and darker, he said; farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the yo...

Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle either of us—and yet the same...

Nature's voice and Nature's beauty---God's soothing and purifying angels of the soul---speak to me m...

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression un...

The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real...