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
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.
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.
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.
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.
tonight language speak
Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.
beautiful heart men
She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.
house breakfast matter
We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.
law brain body
The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time.
expression soul mystery
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.
english-novelist mind peace
Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind.