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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

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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
World
Virtue
Sort
Age
Wrong
Puzzled
Right
Sorts
Many
Citizen
Different
Mets
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Citizens

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.
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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.
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Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.
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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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Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.
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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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The best men are not consistent in good-- why should the worst men be consistent in evil.
Wilkie Collins
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I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools.
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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The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.
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.
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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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...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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I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
Wilkie Collins
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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.
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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The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Wilkie Collins
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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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I am a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man!
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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!
Wilkie Collins