Quotes from Wilkie Collins

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

"I haven't much time to be fond of anything," says Sergeant Cuff. "But when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times… the roses get it."

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Silence is safe.

Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.

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

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.

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

I am thinking,' he remarked quietly, 'whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.

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.

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

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.

I am a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man!

She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.

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.

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?

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?

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

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