Wilkie Collins Quotes & Sayings

We often hear, almost invariably, however, from superficial observers, that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely the truer axiom of the two that innocence can look like guilt. — Wilkie Collins

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

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

There was no mistaking the expression on her face. I inspired her with the strongest emotions of abhorrence and disgust. Let me not be vain enough to say that no woman had ever looked at me in this manner before. I will only venture on the more modest assertion that no woman had ever let me perceive it yet. — Wilkie Collins

The mysterious morning stillness of hall and staircase. Who were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let the house reveal its own secrets; and, one by one, — Wilkie Collins

Leave me my delusion, dearest! I must have that to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have nothing else! — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He received it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract. If I had presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have exhibited greater consternation. He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab. — Wilkie Collins

We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism - here there was nothing but tragedy - mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. — Wilkie Collins

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

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. — Wilkie Collins

Every human institution (Justice included) will stretch a little, if only you pull it in the right way. — Wilkie Collins

She was unlike most girls of her age, in this
that she had ideas of her own. — Wilkie Collins

To-day we love, what to-morrow we hate. — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that vice, in accomplishing the vast majority of its seductions, uses no disguise at all; appears impudently in its naked deformity; and, instead of horrifying all beholders, in accordance with the prediction of the classical satirist, absolutely attracts a much more numerous congregation of worshippers than has ever yet been brought together by the divinest beauties that virtue can display for the allurement of mankind. — Wilkie Collins

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

We meet as mortal enemies hereafter - let us, like gallant gentlemen, exchange polite attentions in the meantime. — Wilkie Collins

So do extremes meet; and such is sometimes the all-embracing capacity of the approval of a fool! — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

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

Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can't forget politics, horses, prices in the city and grievances at the club. I hope you won't take this freedom on my part amiss; it's only a way I have of appealing to a gentle reader. Lord! haven't I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don't I know how ready your attention is to wander when it's a book that asks for it, instead of a person? — Wilkie Collins

I started to my feet as suddenly as if he had struck me. If I had been a man, I would have knocked him down on the threshold of his own door, and have left his house, never on any earthly consideration to enter it again. But I was only a woman - and I loved his wife so dearly! — Wilkie Collins

the window, turned back again into the room, — Wilkie Collins

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

The small pulse of the life within me, and the great heart of the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison. — Wilkie Collins

Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted - never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. — Wilkie Collins

I have always cultivated a feeling of humane indulgence for foreigners. They do not possess our blessings and advantages, and they are, for the most part, brought up in the blind errors of Popery. It has also always been my precept and practice, as it was my dear husband's precept and practice before me (see Sermon XXIX. in the Collection by the late Rev. Samuel Michelson, M.A.), to do as I would be done by. On both these accounts I will not say that Mrs. Rubelle struck me as being a small, wiry, sly person, of fifty or thereabouts, with a dark brown or Creole complexion and watchful light grey eyes. Nor — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

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

Now, tell me, my dear, I said, what are you crying about?
About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly. My past life still comes back to me sometimes.
Come, come, my girl, I said, your past life is all sponged out. Why can't you forget it?
"She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man, and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes. Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my grease. The day before, Roseanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything. The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place, and shook here head.
The stain is taken off, she said. But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge
the place shows! — Wilkie Collins

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

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

I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools. — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

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

The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild. — Wilkie Collins

Through all the ways of our unintelligible world, the trivial and the terrible walk hand in hand together. — Wilkie Collins

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

Who cares for his causes of complaint? Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace - they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship - they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return? — Wilkie Collins

You don't have to speak at all
I know what you'd say ...
- Laura — Wilkie Collins

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

She drew back from the spectacle of my humiliation and of her triumph. The sudden silence that had fallen upon me seemed to frighten her. "I spared you, at the time," she said. "I would have spared you now, if you had not forced me to speak." She moved away as if to leave the room-- and hesitated before she got to the door. "Why did you come here to humiliate yourself?" she asked. "Why did you come here to humiliate me?" She went on a few steps, and paused once more. "For God's sake, say something!" she exclaimed, passionately. "If you have any mercy left, don't let me degrade myself in this way! Say something--and drive me out of the room! — Wilkie Collins

Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind. — Wilkie Collins

Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us. — Wilkie Collins

Yes! 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. — Wilkie Collins

It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone. — Wilkie Collins

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

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

Even lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave of her. The — Wilkie Collins

After the lapse of a minute, I roused my manhood, and opened the door. — Wilkie Collins

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

I smell your cigar. Delicious! Give me one directly. — Wilkie Collins

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

Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women. — Wilkie Collins

expression - nothing — Wilkie Collins

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

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

The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad. — Wilkie Collins

It is the nature of truth to struggle to the light. — Wilkie Collins

Characters to the Story, — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

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

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

mong the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out crying. — Wilkie Collins

Are you free of each other, pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both parties? — Wilkie Collins

My dear friend! what is there extraordinary in that? They are all in love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman's heart? In all my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One, never! He exists, of course - but, I have not met with him. — Wilkie Collins

The human heart is unsearchable. Who is to fathom it? — Wilkie Collins

Now I will be anything else you please, except dull. You may say I have been dull already? As I am an honest woman, I don't agree with you. There are some people who bring dull minds to their reading - and them blame the writer for it. I say no more. — Wilkie Collins

My daughter Penelope has just looked over my shoulder to see what I have done so far. She remarks that it is beautifully written, and every word of it true. But she points out one objection. She says what I have done so far isn't in the least what I was wanted to do. I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self. Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. 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? If they do, I can feel for them. In the meantime, here is another false start, and more waste of good writing-paper. What's to be done now? Nothing that I know of, except for you to keep your temper, and for me to begin it all over again for the third time. — Wilkie Collins

The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk. — Wilkie Collins

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

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

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

See with nobody's eyes, we hear with nobody's ears, we feel with nobody's hearts, but our own. — Wilkie Collins

Ah! How much happiness there is in life if we will only have the patience to wait for it. — Wilkie Collins

He has trifled with the sacred memory of my husband," thought the Professor's widow. "On my life and honor, I will make him pay for it. — Wilkie Collins

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

I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong. — Wilkie Collins

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

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen. — Wilkie Collins

They seem to be in a conspiracy to persecute you," she said. "What does it mean?"
"Only the protest of the world, Miss Verinder - on a very small scale - against anything that is new. — Wilkie Collins

You may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you - 'Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window - you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not a Chancellor of the Exchequer - but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp? — Wilkie Collins

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

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

But you make allowances for women; we all talk nonsense. Good — Wilkie Collins

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

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