The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

“Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.”

Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer’s side, I said I thought so, too.

If you are curious to know what course I took under the circumstances, I beg to inform you that I did what you would probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed upon me—and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite clever enough to perform it, if I only gave my own abilities a fair chance.

He declined to believe in my modesty; and he insisted on giving my abilities a fair chance.

You hear more than enough of married people living together miserably. Here is an example to the contrary. Let it be a warning to some of you, and an encouragement to others.

When I wanted to go up-stairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.

“To-day we love, what to-morrow we hate.”

Persons and Things do turn up so vexatiously in this life, and will in a manner insist on being noticed.

Truer words have probaby never been written.

She was more like a fly than a woman: she couldn’t settle on anything.”

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.”

You dabbled in nasty mud, and made pies, when you were a child; and you dabble in nasty science, and dissect spiders, and spoil flowers, when you grow up.

Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn’t exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you!—you have married a monster.

The last time I was in London, my mistress gave me two treats. She sent me to the theatre to see a dancing woman who was all the rage; and she sent me to Exeter Hall to hear Mr. Godfrey. The lady did it, with a band of music. The gentleman did it, with a handkerchief and a glass of water.

What chance had Mr. Franklin—what chance had anybody of average reputation and capacities—against such a man as this?

if Art requires these sort of sacrifices—though the girl is my own daughter—I say, let Art have them!

I didn’t know; but I began to suspect that cousin Godfrey might not be far away from cousin Rachel.

The sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India, if you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all.”

“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.

Many men, many opinions, as one of the ancients said, before my time.

In cases where you don’t see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.

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.

“When things are at the worst, they’re sure to mend.

He has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my conscience,

We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is—as all serious people know—to rescue unredeemed fathers’ trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions of the innocent son.

It was impossible not to admire her delicacy and her resolution, and it was equally impossible not to feel that she was putting herself in the wrong.

The interval of expectation, short as it was when reckoned by the measure of time, assumed formidable proportions when reckoned by the measure of suspense.

“There’s a bottom of good sense, Mr. Franklin, in our conduct to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of life. We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world. And we are all of us right.”

“Nothing venture, nothing have,”

“Sir,” he said gravely, “there are great allowances to be made for a man who has not read Robinson Crusoe since he was a child. I wish you good morning.”

Here the door opened, and Mrs. Merridew uttered another little scream. The advent of the explosion? No: only the advent of Betteredge.