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

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
Women
Ever
Fencing
Men
Engages
Unprepared
Match
Sensible
Words
Woman

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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.
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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?
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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.
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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 am (thank God) constitutionally superior to reason.
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I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools.
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Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women.
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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.
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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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Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.
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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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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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We neither know nor judge ourselves others may judge, but cannot know us. God alone judges and knows us.
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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.
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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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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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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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The best men are not consistent in good-- why should the worst men be consistent in evil.
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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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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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