Armadale Quotes

“The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“The books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“The only hope I have left for you hangs on a great doubt - the doubt whether we are, or are not, the masters of our own destinies. It may be that mortal free-will can conquer mortal fate; and that going, as we all do, inevitably to death, we go inevitably to nothing that is before death.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“How inestimably important in its moral results—and therefore how praiseworthy in itself—is the act of eating and drinking! The social virtues center in the stomach. A man who is not a better husband, father, and brother after dinner than before is, digestively speaking, an incurably vicious man.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“He inquired next what Allan had seen in the stranger to take such a fancy to? Allan had seen in him—what he didn't see in people in general. He wasn't like all the other fellows in the neighborhood. All the other fellows were cut out on the same pattern. Every man of them was equally healthy, muscular, loud, hard-hearted, clean-skinned, and rough; every man of them drank the same draughts of beer, smoked the same short pipes all day long, rode the best horse, shot over the best dog, and put the best bottle of wine in England on his table at night; every man of them sponged himself every morning in the same sort of tub of cold water and bragged about it in frosty weather in the same sort of way; every man of them thought getting into debt a capital joke and betting on horse-races one of the most meritorious actions that a human being can perform. They were, no doubt, excellent fellows in their way; but the worst of them was, they were all exactly alike. It was a perfect godsend to meet with a man like Midwinter—a man who was not cut out on the regular local pattern, and whose way in the world had the one great merit (in those parts) of being a way of his own.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“He started up, and wrung my hand in quite an ecstasy of gratitude. How I do hate people who can only express their feelings by hurting other people's hand.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“A young man who plays his part in society by looking on in green spectacles, and listening with a sickly smile, may be a prodigy of intellect and a mine of virtue, but he is hardly, perhaps, the right sort of man to have at a picnic.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“I have heard all I ever want to hear about the past," he said; "and I know what I most wanted to know about the future. Everybody says, Midwinter, you have a career before you, and I believe that everybody is right. Who knows what great things may happen before you and I are many years older?"
.
"Who _need_ know?" said Midwinter, calmly. "Happen what may, God is all-merciful, God is all-wise. In those words your dear old friend once wrote to me. In that faith I can look back without murmuring at the years that are past, and can look on without doubting to the years that are to come.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“...that much gold, and great store of riches makes them mad, insomuch as they endeavour to destroy each other...”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings

“...that in former ages they had been as wise as they are in this present, nay, wiser; for, said they, many in this age do think their forefathers have been fools, by which they prove themselves to be such.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings

“Besides, we shall want employments for our senses, and subjects for arguments; for were there nothing but truth, and no falsehood, there would be no occasion for to dispute, and by this means we should want the aim and pleasure of our endeavours in confuting and contradicting each other; neither would one man be thought wiser than another, but all would either be alike knowing and wise, or all would be fools...”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings

“A judge, replied the Empress, is easy to be had, but to get an impartial judge, is a thing so difficult.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“each followed such a profession as was most proper for the nature of their Species, which the Empress encouraged them in, especially those that had applied themselves to the study of several Arts and Sciences; for they were as ingenious and witty in the invention of profitable and useful Arts, as we are in our world, nay, more; and to that end she erected Schools, and founded several Societies.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“A man who is not a better husband, father, and brother after dinner than before is, digestively speaking, an incurably vicious man.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“He looked up brightly again at Mr. Brock. "Am I in the right way now, sir? Am I doing my best to profit by the caution which you have kindly given me?" "You are vindicating your own better sense," answered the rector, encouraging him to trample down his own imagination, with an Englishman's ready distrust of the noblest of the human faculties.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“Allan found his place for the second time, and fell headlong into the bottomless abyss of the English Law.
“Page 280,” he began. “Law of husband and wife. Here’s a bit I don’t understand, to begin with: ‘It may be observed generally that the law considers marriage in the light of a Contract.’ What does that mean? I thought a contract was the sort of a thing a builder signs when he promises to have the workmen out of the house in a given time, and when the time comes (as my poor mother used to say) the workmen never go.”

“Is there nothing about Love?” asked Neelie. “Look a little lower down.”

“Not a word. He sticks to his confounded ‘Contract’ all the way through.”

“Then he’s a brute! Go on to something else that’s more in our way.”

“Here’s a bit that’s more in our way: ‘Incapacities. If any persons under legal incapacities come together, it is a meretricious, and not a matrimonial union.’ (Blackstone’s a good one at long words, isn’t he? I wonder what he means by meretricious?) ‘The first of these legal disabilities is a prior marriage, and having another husband or wife living — ’“

“Stop!” said Neelie; “I must make a note of that.” She gravely made her first entry on the page headed “Good,” as follows: “I have no husband, and Allan has no wife. We are both entirely unmarried at the present time.”

“All right, so far,” remarked Allan, looking over her shoulder.
“Go on,” said Neelie. “What next?”
“‘The next disability,’“ proceeded Allan, “‘is want of age. The age for consent to matrimony is, fourteen in males, and twelve in females.’ Come!” cried Allan, cheerfully, “Blackstone begins early enough, at any rate!”

Neelie was too business-like to make any other remark, on her side, than the necessary remark in the pocketbook. She made another entry under the head of “Good”: “I am old enough to consent, and so is Allan too. Go on,” resumed Neelie, looking over the reader’s shoulder. “Never mind all that prosing of Blackstone’s, about the husband being of years of discretion, and the wife under twelve. Abominable wretch! the wife under twelve! Skip to the third incapacity, if there is one.”
“‘The third incapacity,’“ Allan went on, “‘is want of reason.’“
Neelie immediately made a third entry on the side of “Good”: “Allan and I are both perfectly reasonable. Skip to the next page.”
Allan skipped. “‘A fourth incapacity is in respect of proximity of relationship.’“
A fourth entry followed instantly on the cheering side of the pocketbook: “He loves me, and I love him — without our being in the slightest degree related to each other. Any more?” asked Neelie, tapping her chin impatiently with the end of the pencil.
“Plenty more,” rejoined Allan; “all in hieroglyphics. Look here: ‘Marriage Acts, 4 Geo. IV., c. 76, and 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 85 (q).’ Blackstone’s intellect seems to be wandering here. Shall we take another skip, and see if he picks himself up again on the next page?”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“Many a young man of the past generation, who was no fool, has sacrificed everything for love. Not one young man in ten thousand of the present generation, except the fools, has sacrificed a halfpenny. The daughters of Eve still inherit their mother’s merits and commit their mother’s faults. But the sons of Adam, in these latter days, are men who would have handed the famous apple back with a bow, and a “Thanks, no; it might get me into a scrape.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“Miss Milroy adored music, both on the water and the land — always excepting the one case when she was practising the art herself on the piano at home.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“Now did the Reverend Samuel Pentecost, whose light had hitherto been hidden under a bushel, prove at last that he could do something by proving that he could eat. Now did Pedgift Junior shine brighter than ever he had shone yet in gems of caustic humour and exquisite fertilities of resource. Now did the squire, and the squire’s charming guest, prove the triple connection between Champagne that sparkles, Love that grows bolder, and Eyes whose vocabulary is without the word No”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“My eyes have lost nothing yet, at any rate, though I am five-and-thirty; the poor man actually blushed when I looked at him! What sort of colour do you think he would have turned, if one of the little birds in the garden had whispered in his ear, and told him the true story of the charming Miss Gwilt?”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“..fear and wonder makes gods.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings

“You gave me your promise," was the reply, spoken with the same immovable self-possession. "You must write for me, or break your word.”
― Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“But the Duchess's Soul being troubled, that her dear Lord and Husband used such a violent exercise before meat, for fear of overheating himself, without any consideration of the Empress's Soul, left her Æreal Vehicle, and entred into her Lord. The Empress's Soul perceiving this, did the like: And then the Duke had three Souls in one Body; and had there been some such Souls more, the Duke would have been like the Grand-Signior in his Seraglio, onely it would have been a Platonick Seraglio.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World

“That this multitude of pores was the cause of the blackness of the Coal; for, said they, a body that has so many pores, from each of which no light is reflected, must necessarily look black, since black is nothing else but a privation of light, or a want of reflection.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“Phænomena's of Cœlestial Bodies”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“Nevertheless, although they were thinner then the thinnest vapour, yet were they not so thin as the body of air, or else they would not be perceptible by animal sight.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“Besides, said they, a Monarchy is a divine form of Government, and agrees most with our Religion: For as there is but one God, whom we all unanimously worship and adore with one Faith; so we are resolved to have but one Emperor, to whom we all submit with one obedience.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“At which the Emperor rejoycing, made her his Wife, and gave her an absolute power to rule and govern all that World as she pleased.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

“By which we may see, that Novelty discomposes the mind, but acquaintance settles it in peace and tranquillity.”
― Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World