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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.

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
Writing
Luxury
Years
Species
Time
Waste
People
Decided
Exertion
Novel
Utter
Dangerous
Lowest
Reading
Literary
Everyone
Dull

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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.
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Except in this ignorant and material century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful colours as well as women.
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The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time.
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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.
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Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs Vesey sat through life.
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Where is the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed - but what does our own experiences say in answer to books?
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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.
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This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
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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.
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I haven't much time to be fond of anything. But when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times the roses get it.
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No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
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Yes! the books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the 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.
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The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.
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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?
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I have heard, as everybody else has, of a spirit's haunting a house but I have had my own personal experience of a house's haunting a spirit.
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I am (thank God) constitutionally superior to reason.
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I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.
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It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand.
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Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you?
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If I ever meet with the man who fulfills my ideal, I shall make it a condition of the marriage settlement, that I am to have chocolate under the pillow.
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