Recently finished the Classic mystery of the "Woman in White" I had been suggested this book by one of my college professors and finally got around to reading it. It really keeps you on the edge throughout; wondering always how things will be resolved. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the way Men and Women are portrayed in the book. I love that such a smart woman character dominates and creates the vital movements of the story.
Below are a few favorite quotes, though most of what is great about this book cannot be quoted, just needs to be read from start to finish to really appreciate it.
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.
*She was the woman who first gave life, light, and forms to our shadowy conceptions of beauty; she filled a void in our spiritual nature that had remained unknown to us till she appeared. 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.
*“I shall believe all that you say to me” she answered simply. In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character; to that generous trust of others which, in her nature, grew innocently out of her own truth. I only knew it intuitively then. I know it by experience now.
*At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn, as an Art.
*Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
*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.
*When two member of a family, or two intimate friends, are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been traveling, always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage, when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems, at first, to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side.
*Where is the woman, in the whole range of our sex, who can regulate her actions by the abstract principles of honor, when those principles point one way, and when her affections, and the interests which grow out of them, point the other?
*I am a bad man, am I not? I say what other people only think; and when all the rest of the world is in a 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.
*Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight? Ah! I love it. 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. Nature has such imperishable charms, such inextinguishable tendernesses for me! I am an old, fat man: talk which would become a ladies lips sounds like a derision and a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my moments of sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and overgrown. Observe, dear lady, what a light is dying on the trees! Does it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?
*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.
*I had just entered on a lonely part of the road, with a sharp turn at some distance ahead, and had just concluded that I must be getting near to the town, when I suddently heard the steps of the men close behind me.
*The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
*Through what mortal crime and horror, through what darkest windings of the way down to Death, the lost creature had wandered in God’s leading to the last home that, living, she never hoped to reach! In that sacred rest, I leave her—in that dread companionships, let her remain undisturbed.
*I thought of the disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance, had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.
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