And You Can Quote Me: The Woman in White; Wilkie Collins

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

Are we, I wonder, quite such genuine boys and girls now as our seniors were in their time?

"You will be kinder than ever, if you will walk on fast, and not speak to me. I sadly want to quiet myself, if I can."

"...no woman does think much of her own sex, although few of them confess it as freely as I do."

...sensations...crowded on me...familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to life in most of our hearts, die again in so many, and renew their bright existence in so few...

Something wanting, something wanting– and where it was, and what it was, I could not say.

We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books.

Peaceful, fast-flowing, happy time ! my story glides by you now as swiftly as you once glided by me. Of all the treasure that you poured so freely into my heart, how much is left me that has purpose and value enough to be written on this page?

I loved her.
Ah ! how well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her! Feel for me, or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution to own the truth.

I must lose her soon, and love her the more unchangeably for the loss.

"And your mother?"
"I don't get on well with her. We are a trouble and a fear to each other."

"Don't speak of tomorrow...Let the music speak to us tonight, in a happier language than ours."

"I left yesterday to decide, and yesterday has decided. It is too late to go back."

"Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace..."

Is this the end to all that sad story? Oh, not the end– surely not the end!

"Keep me always doing something...keep me always in company with somebody. Don't let me think– that is all I ask now...don't let me think."

The last day has been all confusion and wretchedness. How can I write about it? – and yet, I must write. Anything is better than brooding over my own gloomy thoughts.

"..if you are upset trust the devil to save his own."

I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.

Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.

"I am still walking on the dark road which leads me...to the unknown Retribution and the inevitable End. Wait and look. The Pestilence which touches the rest will pass me...Another step... on the dark road. Wait and look. The arrows that strike the rest will spare me...Another step on the journey. Wait and look. The Sea which drowns the rest will spare me...Darker and darker...farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the young– and spares me. The Pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave that closes over Love and Hope, are steps on my journey, and take me nearer and nearer to the End."

"I feel my inborn admiration of all that is noble, and great, and good, purified by the breath of heaven on an evening like this."

"Listen!...There will be a change tomorrow."

The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner or later, to meet the worst. Today is not yet at an end, and the worst has come.

"They are all in love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman's heart? In all my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One, never! He exists, of course– but I have not met with him."

I accomplish my destiny with a calmness which is terrible to myself.

It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone.

Conceive my situation, if you please. Is language adequate to describe it? I think not.

I had done all man could to rise after the shock, and accept my life resignedly– to let my great sorrow come in tenderness to my heart, and not in despair.

This was the story of the past– the story so far as we knew it then.

"Bless you, we are all asleep here! We don't march with the times."

The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk.

"The best men are not consistent in good– why should the worst men be consistent in evil?"

Such is the World, such Man, such Love. What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our string gently! Dance us mercifully off our miserable stage!

Where is the Rembrandt who could depict our midnight procession? Alas for the Arts! alas for this most pictorial of all subjects! The modern Rembrandt is nowhere to be found.

Youths! I invoke your sympathy. Maidens! I claim your tears.