230 Quotes by Wilkie Collins

I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again—why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman’s before—why I saw her, heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, and touched any other woman in my life?

I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? - Reverend Finch's wife

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

I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.

Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it up again, try how you may. -Reverend Finch's wife

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?

I said, "No man is worth fretting for in that way." And she said, "There are men worth dying for, Lucy, and he is one of them.

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

I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He received it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract. If I had presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have exhibited greater consternation. He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab.