The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

The facts here are really so extraordinary, that I doubt if I can trust my own language to do justice to them. I prefer trying to report Mr. Franklin’s discoveries, as nearly as may be, in Mr. Franklin’s own words.

I love the narration style in this. The effortless transfer of POV while keeping the narration with one character only Reminds me of Wuthering Heights or frankly the narration style of Luis in Ant-Man

Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper.”

It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don’t understand.

Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock ahead in life—the rock ahead of their own idleness.

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.

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.

how easy it is to be happy, if you will only be good!

We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world. And we are all of us right.”

I forgot the object that had brought me into her presence; I forgot the vile suspicion that rested on my good name; I forgot every consideration, past, present, and future, which I was bound to remember. I saw nothing but the woman I loved coming nearer and nearer to me.

So romantic for a 1868 novel