Quotes from Wilkie Collins

How it was I don't understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another's way. When I wanted to go up-stairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.

Magdalen drew further and further back. A twig from a tree near caught her cloak; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and threw it on the ground. What right have you to question me? she broke out on a sudden. Whether I like Frank, or whether I don't, what interest is it of yours? As she said the words, she abruptly stepped forward to pass her sister and return to the house.

But it is a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women—if they can.

What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!

It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am right.

The only hope I have left for you hangs on a great doubt - the doubt whether we are, or are not, the masters of our own destinies. It may be that mortal free-will can conquer mortal fate; and that going, as we all do, inevitably to death, we go inevitably to nothing that is before death.

Mr. Bruff, I'm ordered to take exercise and I don't like it. That, added Aunt Ablewhite, pointing out of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels, drawn by a man, is my idea of exercise. If it's air you want, you get it in your chair. And if it's fatique you want, I am sure it's fatiquing enough to look at the man.

To-day we love, what to-morrow we hate.

The human heart is unsearchable. Who is to fathom it?

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

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.

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

The English intellect is sound, so far as it goes,but it has one grave defect--it is always cautious in the wrong place.

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.

Not the shadow of a doubt crossed my mind of the purpose for which the Count had left the theatre. His escape from us, that evening, was beyond all question the preliminary only to his escape from London. The mark of the Brotherhood was on his arm—I felt as certain of it as if he had shown me the brand; and the betrayal of the Brotherhood was on his conscience—I had seen it in his recognition of Pesca.

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!

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...

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

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.

Here, then, was one of my anticipations of the morning still unfulfilled. I began to wonder, next, whether my introduction to Miss Fairlie would disappoint the expectations that I had been forming of her since breakfast-time.

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.

Demandez-vous s´il y a une explication au mystere de la vie et de la mort

Classical works; all (of course) immeasurably superior to anything produced in later times; and all (from my present point of view) possessing the one great merit of enchaining nobody's interest, and exciting nobody's brain.

were we two following our widely parted roads towards one point in the mysterious future, at which we were to meet once more?