Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
9 quotes
"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."
"But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders' stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it must think of, and your hands something that they must do."
"The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still and colourless – met us without a smile."
"If you will look about you (which most people won't do)," says Sergeant Cuff, "you will see that the nature of a man's tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man's business."
"Did you fall asleep?""No. I couldn't sleep that night.""You were restless?""I was thinking of you."The answer almost unmanned me. Something in the tone, even more than in the words, went straight to my heart. It was only after pausing a little first that I was able to go on."
"I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason."
"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."
"He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window."
"I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly."