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

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It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand.
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I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
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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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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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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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Husbands and wives talk of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters bear them.
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We neither know nor judge ourselves others may judge, but cannot know us. God alone judges and knows us.
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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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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. I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.
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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.
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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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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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What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!
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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.
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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
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The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
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Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.
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Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women.
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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.
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But I am a just man, even to my enemy - and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer brains than I thought them
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