Wilkie Collins

“There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every…

— Wilkie Collins

“Let Lady Glyde's maid come in, Louis. Stop! Do her shoes creak?" I was obliged to ask the question. Creaking shoes invariably…

— Wilkie Collins

Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.

— Wilkie Collins

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature…

— Wilkie Collins

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

— Wilkie Collins

“I smell your cigar. Delicious! Give me one directly.”

— Wilkie Collins

“I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can tell, but I see some hope for her if she…

— Wilkie Collins

“It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am right.”

— Wilkie Collins

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the…

— Wilkie Collins

Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can…

— Wilkie Collins

“He has that quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest, in listening to a woman, which, say what we may, we…

— Wilkie Collins

“The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk.”

— Wilkie Collins

“It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently…

— Wilkie Collins

“Tell him next, that crimes cause their own detection. There's another bit of copy-book morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own…

— Wilkie Collins

“Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be…

— Wilkie Collins

The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred…

— Wilkie Collins

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!

— Wilkie Collins

Tears are scientifically described as a Secretion. I can understand that a secretion may be healthy or unhealthy, but I cannot see…

— Wilkie Collins

“One after another, they were examined. One after another, they proved to have nothing to say--and said it (so far as the…

— Wilkie Collins

“We often hear, almost invariably, however, from superficial observers, that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely the…

— Wilkie Collins

“Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that…

— Wilkie Collins

“But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders' stomachs,…

— Wilkie Collins

Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine,…

— Wilkie Collins

“You don’t have to speak at all— I know what you’d say… - Laura”

— Wilkie Collins

The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.

— Wilkie Collins