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The Moonstone QUOTES

The Moonstone QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders' stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it must think of, and your hands something that they must do. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

3 " 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

4 " 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

5 " I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

6 " He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

7 " I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

8 " 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

9 " 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

10 " 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

11 " 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

12 " 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

13 " 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. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

14 " 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

15 " 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

16 " The human heart is unsearchable. Who is to fathom it? "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

17 " 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

18 " Every human institution (Justice included) will stretch a little, if only you pull it in the right way. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

19 " She was unlike most girls of her age, in this--that she had ideas of her own. "

― Wilkie Collins , The Moonstone

20 " 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