The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

It’s curious to note, when your mind’s anxious, how very far in the way of relief a very small joke will go.

he seemed to pass his life in a state of perpetual contradiction with himself.

when I turned about in the yard and found I was alone again, I felt half inclined to ask myself if I hadn’t woke up from a dream.

“Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about.”

whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn’t matter, you must have your breakfast.

Circumstances try the metal a man is really made of.

Every human institution (justice included) will stretch a little, if you only pull it the right way.

Many men, many opinions,

The man made of cotton had disappeared; and the man made of iron sat before me again.

But when you are old, you acquire one excellent habit. In cases where you don’t see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.

“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.

a curious dimness and dullness in her eyes—not as if she had been crying but as if she had been looking at something too long.

Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it.

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves—among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be.

Septimus Luker,

We ended the day of rest, as hundreds of thousands of people end it regularly, once a week, in these islands—that is to say, we all anticipated bedtime, and fell asleep in our chairs.

the day is not far off when the poor will rise against the rich.

“look to the end.”

Patmos amid the howling ocean of popery that surrounds us—a

He might not have respected my life. But he did what none of my own countrymen had ever done, in all my experience of them—he respected my time.

“Nothing venture, nothing have,”

The past and present rose side by side, at that supreme moment—and the contrast shook me.

I saw nothing but the woman I loved coming nearer and nearer to me.

When the pursuit of our own interests causes us to become objects of inquiry to ourselves, we are naturally suspicious of what we don’t know.

The end is not far off now. Let it come—I have not lived and worked in vain.

You, and such as you, show me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me with the world that I am leaving, before I go.

God be praised for His mercy! I have seen a little sunshine—I have had a happy time.

the long trouble of his life was at an end.

When this is said, all is said. Ladies and gentlemen, I make my bow, and shut up the story.

So the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time.