Wilkie Collins’ “The Woman in White” Quotes (23 Quotes)

But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?

The grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality.

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?

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

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

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.

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

There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace.

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

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?

Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Tears are scientifically described as a Secretion. I can understand that a secretion may be healthy or unhealthy, but I cannot see the interest of a secretion from a sentimental point of view.

Ah! I am a bad man, Lady Glyde, am I not? 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.

Tell him next, that crimes cause their own detection. There's another bit of copy-book morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug!

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.

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.