Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Wilkie Collins

Image
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.
Wilkie Collins
Image
Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs Vesey sat through life.
Wilkie Collins
Image
There are three things that none of the young men of the present generation can do.They can't sit over their winethey can't play at wistand they can't pay a lady a compliment.
Wilkie Collins
Image
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
Image
But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?
Wilkie Collins
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is the nature of truth to struggle to the light.
Wilkie Collins
Image
The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad.
Wilkie Collins
Image
I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.
Wilkie Collins
Image
I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools.
Wilkie Collins
Image
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.
Wilkie Collins
Image
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
Image
And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.
Wilkie Collins
Image
My business in life is to eat, drink, sleep, and die. Everything else is superfluity and I will have none of it.
Wilkie Collins
Image
I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong.
Wilkie Collins
Image
The best men are not consistent in good-- why should the worst men be consistent in evil.
Wilkie Collins
Image
Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
Wilkie Collins
Image
We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.
Wilkie Collins
Image
The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Wilkie Collins