“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Some of us rush through life and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“I am a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man!”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources of expression can realise. The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“...it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all. ”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Who cares for his causes of complaint? Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace - they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship - they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Dont speak of tomorrow.Let the music speak to us tonight,in a happier language than ours.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“It was cold and barren. It was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence was far from me. The charm of her voice no longer murmured in my ear.”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
“No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace – they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship – they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return?”
― Wilkie Collins, quote from The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 8, 1824
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“Right now I feel guilty to be alive. Why? Because I’m wasting it. I’ve been given this life and all I do is mope it away.
What’s worse is, I am totally aware of how ridiculous I am. It would be a lot easier if I believed I was the center of the universe, because then I wouldn’t know any better NOT to make a big deal out of everything. I know how small my problems are, yet that doesn’t stop me from obsessing about them.
I have to stop doing this.
How do other people get happy? I look at people laughing and smiling and enjoying themselves and try to get inside their heads. How do Bridget, Manda, and Sara do it? Or Pepe? Or EVERYONE but me?
Why does everything I see bother me? Why can’t I just get over these daily wrongdoings? Why can’t I just move on and make the best of what I’ve got?
I wish I knew.”
― Megan McCafferty, quote from Sloppy Firsts
“But if you knew that, why on earth did you marry her?" Rosemary asked.
"Why?" Rhett's mouth twisted in a smile.
"Because she was so full of fire and so recklessly, stubbornly brave.Because she was such a child beneath all her pretenses.Because she was unlike any woman I had ever known. She fascinated
me,infuriated me, drove me mad. I loved her as consumingly as she loved him. From the day I first laid eyes on her. It was a kind of disease."
There was a weight of sorrow in his voice. He bowed his head into his two hands and laughed shakily. His voice was muffled and blurred by his fingers. "What a grotesque practical joke life is. Now Ashley Wilkes is a free man and would marry Scarlett on a moment's notice, and I want to be rid of her. Naturally that makes her determined to have me. She wants only what she cannot have."
Rhett raised his head. "I'm afraid," he said quietly, "afraid that it will all begin again. I know that she's heartless and completely selfish, that she's like a child who cries for a toy and then breaks it once she has it. But there are moments when she tilts her head at a certain angle, or she smiles that gleeful smile, or she suddenly looks lost-and I come close to forgetting what I know.”
― Alexandra Ripley, quote from Scarlett
“Like the stars, fading with the halo of the vanishing moon. Like the ocean, falling and whispering against the shore. Nothing ever really goes away - it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.”
― Sarah Ockler, quote from Twenty Boy Summer
“I know better than most people that a criminal isn't always a thug in a black leather jacket with a big brand on his forehead to warn us away. Criminals sit next to us on the bus. They pack our groceries and cash our paychecks for us and teach our children. They look no different from you or me. And that's why they get away with it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Vanishing Acts
“I knew someday you would realize your worth. Your worthiness.'
I shake my head. 'Oh Ximena, he was right to choose me but not becuase of my worth...You, Cosme, Hector...were already willing to be heroes. But I would have done nothing, become nothing, were it not for this thing inside me. So you see, God picked me becuase I was unworthy.”
― Rae Carson, quote from The Girl of Fire and Thorns
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Every Which Way But...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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