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
girl school views
I used to attend scientific experiments when I was a girl at school. They invariably ended in an explosion. If Mr. Jennings will be so very kind, I should like to be warned of the explosion this time. With a view to getting it over, if possible, before I go to bed.
beautiful men ignorant
Except in this ignorant and material century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful colours as well as women.
dream book reading
I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.
night temptation gowns
What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!
spiritual lying expression
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.
vanity proud pedants
Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.
thankfulness thank-god reason
I am (thank God) constitutionally superior to reason.
husband wife care
Husbands and wives talk of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters bear them.
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.
wine men play
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.
views healthy tears
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.
patience men stories
This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
christian average comfort
I am an average good Christian, when you don't push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you—which is a great comfort—are, in this respect, much the same as I am.
children ideas machines
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.