“Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too apt to believe that women act on reflection, too. Women do nothing of the sort. They act on impulse; and, in nine cases out of ten, they are heartily sorry for it afterward.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Lo que no está en mi corazón, no lo escribirá mi pluma.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“IT wanted little more than a fortnight to Christmas; but the weather showed no signs yet of the frost and snow, conventionally associated with the coming season. The atmosphere was unnaturally warm, and the old year was dying feebly in sapping rain and enervating mist.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“She put the Trust into her sister's hand. Magdalen took it from her mechanically. "You!" she said, looking at her sister with the remembrance of all that she had vainly ventured, of all that she had vainly suffered, at St. Crux—"you have found it!”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“the mysterious morning stillness of hall and staircase. Who were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let the house reveal its own secrets; and, one by one,”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“The sad truth is, I am a martyr to my own sense of order. All untidiness, all want of system and regularity, cause me the acutest irritation. My attention is distracted, my composure is upset;”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Perhaps I have dwelt too long already on the little story of our parting from home? I can only say, in excuse, that my heart is full of it; and what is not in my heart my pen won't write.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“May I ask a question, doctor? Is she pining in this close place, too? When her sister comes, will her sister take her away?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Now, Betteredge, exert those sharp wits of yours, and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel's instructions point!" I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort; and they consequently muddled it all”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Her heart beat as if it would suffocate her. She had kept her promise bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck at Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed the Secret Trust in her sister's presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing that she had done, nothing even that she had thought, had been concealed from his knowledge.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“You're the most extraordinary man I ever met with. One would think you had done nothing all your life but take people in."
Captain Wragge received that unconscious tribute to his native genius with the complacency of a man who felt that he thoroughly deserved it.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Let the end come as it may, here I am ready to profit by it: here I am, facing both ways, with perfect ease and security - a moral agriculturist, with his eye on two crops at once, and his swindler's sickle ready for any emergency.
For the next week to come, the newspaper will be more interesting to me than ever. I wonder which side I shall eventually belong to?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“So do extremes meet; and such is sometimes the all-embracing capacity of the approval of a fool!”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil,”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“There was genuine regret in his face as he showed her that trifling attention. He was a vagabond and a cheat; he had lived a mean, shuffling, degraded life, but he was human; and she had found her way to the lost sympathies in him which not even the self-profanation of a swindler's existence could wholly destroy. "Damn”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Noel Vanstone [...] composed himself to meet the coming ordeal, with reclining head and grasping hands - in the position familiarly associated to all civilized humanity with a seat in a dentist's chair.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“Very strange!" he said to himself, vacantly. "It's like a scene in a novel—it's like nothing in real life." He”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“[...] Louisa's attention, which had been wandering more and more during the progress of Magdalen's inquiries, wandered away altogether.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“[...] we will leave this place, and go into other lodgings - you as the mistress; and I as the maid."
"I should be found out, ma'am," interposed Louisa, trembling at the prospect before her. "I am not a lady."
"And I am," said Magdalen bitterly. "Shall I tell you what a lady is? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a sense of her own importance. I shall put the gown on your back, and the sense in your head.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“If they show themselves disposed to accept their proper position I will assist them to start virtuously in life by a present of one hundred pounds each. This sum I authorize you to pay them, on their personal application, with the necessary acknowledgment of receipt; and on the express understanding that the transaction, so completed, is to be the beginning and the end of my connection with them. The”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“the window, turned back again into the room,”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“The woman never lived yet who could cast a true-love out of her heart because the object of that love was unworthy of her. All”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
“But she made one serious mistake which very clever people in their intercourse with their intellectual inferiors are almost universally apt to commit—she trusted implicitly to the folly of a fool. She”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from No Name
Wilkie Collins
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 8, 1824
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“Hate the sin, not the sinner.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from Heartbreaker
“We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they point the way to future success. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward
“I'll own up: I think it is a dream, Miss Verena. But a man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat: he stores up a lot of poison.”
― Truman Capote, quote from The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories
“If you offered me the chance to do it all over, knowing what I know now, after the things I’ve seen . . . I’d shoot you in the head. That ain’t the kind of thing you ask a lady. —Frances Brown”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Discount Armageddon
“عن ميلاد يسوع
لقد عزف جبران أنشودة ميلادٍ كما لم يعزفها أحدٌ من قبل، رسم بقلمه لوحةً مزج فيها السرّ بالواقع ..
الرمز بالحقيقة .. كلماته أشبه بأنغامٍ نستمع إليها، كما لمعزوفات الموسيقى، بالوجدان أكثر من العقل، والوجدان ينقل خبرة ميلاد يسوع الطفل عبر شريان المشاعر إلى أعمق أعماق النفس والروح لتحفرها نقشًا لا تمحوه نقرات الموت مهما اشتدّت.
يقول جبران: “كان اليهود يترقّبون مجيء عظيم موعودٌ به منذ ابتداء الدهور ليُخلِّصهم من عبوديّة الأمم، وكانت النفس الكبيرة في اليونان ترى أنّ عبادة المشتري ومينرفا قد ضعفت، فلم تعد الأرواح تشبع من الروحيّات، وكان الفكر السامي في روما يتأمّل فيجد أن ألوهيّة آبولون أصبحت تتباعد من العواطف، وجمال فينوس الأبدي قد أخذ يقترب من الشيخوخة، وكانت الأمم كلّها تشعر على غير معرفة منها بمجاعة نفسيّة إلى تعاليم مترفِّعة عن المادة وبميلٍ عميق إلى الحريّة الروحيّة التي تُعلِّم الإنسان أن يفرح مع قريبه بنور الشمس وجمال الحياة. تلك هي الحريّة الجميلة التي تخوِّل الإنسان أن يقترب من القوّة غير المنظورة بلا خوفٍ ولا وجلٍ بعد أن يقنع الناس طرًّا بأنه يقترب منهم من أجل سعادتهم … ففي ليلة واحدة، بل في ساعة واحدة، بل في لمحة واحدة تنفرد عن الأجيال، لأنّها أقوى من الأجيال، انفتحت شفاه الروح ولفظت ‘كلمة الحياة’ التي كانت في البدء عند الروح، فنزلت مع نور الكواكب وأشعّة القمر وتجسّدت وصارت طفلاً بين ذراعي ابنة من البشر، في مكانٍ حقير، حيث يحمي الرعاة مواشيهم من كواسر اللّيل .. ذلك الطفل النائم على القشّ اليابس في مذود البقر ـ ذلك الملك الجالس فوق عرشٍ مصنوعٍ من القلوب المثقّلة بنير العبوديّة، والنفوس الجائعة إلى الروح، والأفكار التائقة إلى الحكمة ـ ذلك الرضيع الملتف بأثواب أمّه الفقيرة قد انتزع بلطفه صولجان القوة من المشتري وأسلمه للراعي المسكين المتّكئ على الأعشاب بين أغنامه، وأخذ الحكمة من مينرفا برقّته ووضعها على لسان الصيّاد الفقير الجالس في زورقه على شاطئ البحيرة، واستخلص الغبطة بحزن نفسه من آبولون ووهبها لكسير القلب الواقف مستعطيًا أمام الأبواب، وسكب الجمال بجماله من فينيس وبثــّه في روح المرأة الساقطة الخائفة من قساوة المضطّهِدين، وأنزل البعل عن كرسي جبروته وأقام مكانه الفلاّح البائس الذي ينثر في الحقل البذور مع عرق الجبين … هذا الحبّ العظيم الجالس في هذا المذود المنزوي في صدري، هذا الحبّ الجميل الملتف بأقمطة العواطف، هذا الرضيع اللّطيف المتّكِئ على صدر النفس قد جعل الأحزان في باطني مسرّة، واليأس مجدًا، والوحدة نعيمًا. هذا الملك المتعالي فوق عرش الذات المعنويّة قد أعاد بصوته الحياة لأيامي المائتة، وأرجع بملامسة النور إلى أجفاني المقرّحة بالدموع، وانتشل بيمينه آمالي من لجّة القنوط. كان كلّ الزمن ليلاً .. فصار فجرًا وسيصير نهارًا لأنّ أنفاس الطفل يسوع قد تخلّلت دقائق الفضاء ومازجت ثانويات الأثير. وكانت حياتي حزنًا فصارت فرحًا وستصير غبطة لأنّ ذراعي الطفل قد ضمّتا قلبي وعانقتا نفسي.”
― Kahlil Gibran, quote from Jesus the Son of Man
The Iron King
The Last Battle
Bleak House
Voyager
Torment
Brideshead Revisited...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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