Home > Work > The Woman in White
61 " The small pulse of the life within me, and the great heart of the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison. "
― Wilkie Collins , The Woman in White
62 " Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you? "
63 " I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, "
64 " Through all the ways of our unintelligible world, the trivial and the terrible walk hand in hand together. "
65 " He has that quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest, in listening to a woman, which, say what we may, we can none of us resist. "
66 " Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the house-keeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way. "
67 " The grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality. "
68 " Let Lady Glyde's maid come in, Louis. Stop! Do her shoes creak?" I was obliged to ask the question. Creaking shoes invariably upset me for the day. I was resigned to see the Young Person, but I was NOT resigned to let the Young Person's shoes upset me. There is a limit even to my endurance. "
69 " The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk. "
70 " What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our moserable little stage! "
71 " Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all. "
72 " Is it necessary to say what my first impression was when I looked at my visitor's card? Surely not! My sister having married a foreigner, there was but one impression that any man in his senses could possibly feel. Of course the Count had come to borrow money of me."Louis," I said, "do you think he would go away if you gave him five shillings? "
73 " THIS is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve. "
74 " The rod of iron with which he rules her never appears in company--it is a private rod, and is always kept upstairs. "
75 " I should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the woman who has lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself of all my energies, who has become the one guiding influence that now directs the purpose of my life. "
76 " In my youth, I should have chafed and fretted under the irritation of my own unreasonable state of mind. In my age, I knew better, and went out philosophically to walk it off. "
77 " One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. "
78 " … you are so much better off as a single woman – unless – unless you are very fond of your husband … "
79 " Any woman who is sure of her own wits is a match at any time for a man who is not sure of his own temper. "
80 " He was in that state of highly respectful sulkiness which is peculiar to English servants. "