Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collinswas an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. His best-known works are The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone. The last is considered the first modern English detective novel...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 January 1824
women fencing sensible
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
house haunting spirit
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.
thinking hands people
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.
wise men fool
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.
christian morning prayer
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.
flower rose moments
I haven't much time to be fond of anything . . . But when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times . . . the roses get it.
summer book pride
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.
reading writing years
The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.
book heart answers
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?
father garden hands
I haven't much time to be fond of anything ... but when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times ... the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.
successful use may
I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.
book masters mets
The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
life leaving tears
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.
heaven earth littles
And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.