150
" Какво е прикриването или откриването на престъплението? Състезание по умение между полицията, от една страна, и индивида, от друга. Когато престъпникът е жесток, невеж глупак, в девет от десет случая полицията печели. Когато престъпникът е решителен, образован, високо интелигентен човек, в девет от десетте случая полицията губи. Ако тя спечели, вие обикновено научавате всичко. Ако загуби, вие нищо не чувате за случая. И върху тази клатушкаща се основа изграждате вашата успокоителна модерна максима, че престъплението само поражда своето разкриване! Да — за всички престъпления, за които сте чували. А какво ще кажете за останалите? "
― Wilkie Collins , The Woman in White
157
" Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir. Let the kind, candid blue eyes meet yours, as they met mine, with the one matchless look which we both remember so well. Let her voice speak the music that you once loved best, attuned as sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her footstep, as she comes and goes, in these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall your own heart once beat time. Take her as the visionary nursling of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you, all the more clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine. "
― Wilkie Collins , The Woman in White
159
" The ladies, my good Percival, shall tell me about virtue," he said. "They are better authorities than I am, for they know what virtue is, and I don't." "You hear him?" said Sir Percival. "Isn't it awful?" "It is true," said the Count quietly. "I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong. Here, in England, there is one virtue. And there, in China, there is another virtue. And John Englishman says my virtue is the genuine virtue. And John Chinaman says my virtue is the genuine virtue. And I say Yes to one, or No to the other, and am just as much bewildered about it in the case of John with the top-boots as I am in the case of John with the pigtail. Ah, nice little Mousey! come, kiss me. What is your own private notion of a virtuous man, my pret-pret-pretty? A man who keeps you warm, and gives you plenty to eat. And a good notion, too, for it is intelligible, at the least. "
― Wilkie Collins , The Woman in White