Wilkie Collins — Quotes from Author's Books

Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.

He is trying to frighten you—a sure sign that he is frightened himself.

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.

When a sensible woman has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she has something to conceal.

Her words, few as they were, betrayed a desperate clinging to the past which boded ill for the future.

Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life.

Most men show something of their disposition in their own houses...

However well established a woman's principles may be she cannot always keep on her guard against the temptation to exercise an idle curiosity.

Who gets the first of a woman's heart? In all my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One, never! He exists, of course—but I have not met with him.

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.

No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.

Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.

Truly wise men are truly good men, and have a horror of crime.

All that our minds can compass, all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth can show.

What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box?
Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently!
Dance us mercifully off our miserable little stage!