Wilkie Collins Quotes

I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man.

Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death.

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.

A very remarkable work... in the present state of light literature in England, a novel that actually tells a story. It 's quite incredible, I know. Try the book. It has another extraordinary merit, it isn't written by a woman.

The actions of human beings are not invariably governed by the laws of pure reason

I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.

Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women.

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

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.

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

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

My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

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.

We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.

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.