Wilkie Collins

It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the conquering - it is not for you to say how far the worst of all exasperations may, or may not, carry the maddened men of an enslaved nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at the secret self which smolders in him, sometimes under the every-day respectability and tranquility of a man like me - sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am - but judge us not. In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice - the long luxury of your freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now.

The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!

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.

I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools.

The books__he generous friends who met me without suspicion__he merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

You don__ have to speak at all__ know what you__ say_- Laura

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

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.

There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace.

I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? - Reverend Finch's wife

The best men are not consistent in good__hy should the worst men be consistent in evil?

Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.

Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it up again, try how you may. -Reverend Finch's wife

The bleak autumn wind was still blowing, and the solemn, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary and awful to hear through the night silence. Issac felt strangely wakeful. He resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle alight until he began to grow sleepy; for there was something unendurably depressing in the bare idea of lying awake in the darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moan of the wind in the wood. ("The Dream Woman")

I am thinking,_ he remarked quietly, __hether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.

Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle either of us__nd yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone

I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.