The Moonstone Quotes

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice—ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“She was unlike most girls of her age, in this--that she had ideas of her own.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“Every human institution (Justice included) will stretch a little, if only you pull it in the right way.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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, The Moonstone

“At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this, he had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more or less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a state of perpetual contradiction with himself. He could be a busy man, and a lazy man; cloudy in the head, and clear in the head; a model of determination, and a spectacle of helplessness, all together. He had his French side, and his German side, and his Italian side--the original English foundation showing through, every now and then, as much as to say, "Here I am, sorely transmogrified, as you see, but there's something of me left at the bottom of him still.”
― William Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new. ”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“This is a miserable world", says the Sergeant. "Human life, Mr. Betteredge, is a sort of target --misfortune is always firing at it, and always hitting the mark".”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear. 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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn't matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“see with nobody's eyes, we hear with nobody's ears, we feel with nobody's hearts, but our own.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“We often hear, almost invariably, however, from superficial observers, that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely the truer axiom of the two that innocence can look like guilt.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“If it's any comfort to you, collar me again. You don't in the least know how to do it; but I'll overlook your awkwardness in consideration of your feelings.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“The human heart is unsearchable. Who is to fathom it?”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He received it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract. If I had presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have exhibited greater consternation. He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“Whenever a woman tries to put you out of temper, turn the tables, and put HER out of temper instead. They are generally prepared for every effort you can make in your own defence, but that. One word does it as well as a hundred; and one word did it with Limping Lucy. I looked her pleasantly in the face; and I said—"Pooh!”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture to describe as the unsought self-possession, which is a sure sign of good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere else in the civilized world.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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. In the meantime, I will go on with my story.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“But it is a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women—if they can.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“We had our breakfasts—whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast. When”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone - Special 'Magic' Edition

“They seem to be in a conspiracy to persecute you,” she said. “What does it mean?”

“Only the protest of the world, Miss Verinder — on a very small scale — against anything that is new.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“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.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone