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

Wilkie Collins

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Wilkie Collins
Age: 65 †
Born: 1824
Born: January 8
Died: 1889
Died: September 23
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet Lawyer
Writer
London
England
William Collins
William Wilkie Collins
Dwarfs
Giants
Injury
Service
Words

More quotes by Wilkie Collins

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This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
Wilkie Collins
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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.
Wilkie Collins
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But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?
Wilkie Collins
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We neither know nor judge ourselves others may judge, but cannot know us. God alone judges and knows us.
Wilkie Collins
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I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard and shows the bare bones beneath.
Wilkie Collins
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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.
Wilkie Collins
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And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.
Wilkie Collins
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Except in this ignorant and material century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful colours as well as women.
Wilkie Collins
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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.
Wilkie Collins
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Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity?
Wilkie Collins
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My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.
Wilkie Collins
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Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.
Wilkie Collins
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Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs Vesey sat through life.
Wilkie Collins
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The fool's crime is the crime that is found out and the wise man's crime is the crime that is not found out.
Wilkie Collins
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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.
Wilkie Collins
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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.
Wilkie Collins
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...it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.
Wilkie Collins
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The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.
Wilkie Collins
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My business in life is to eat, drink, sleep, and die. Everything else is superfluity and I will have none of it.
Wilkie Collins
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The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.
Wilkie Collins