Quotes from The Woman in White
12 notable lines from Wilkie Collins · 1859
There, in the middle of the broad bright high-road—there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven—stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.
This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
Walter Hartright The fool's crime is the crime that is found out, and the wise man's crime is the crime that is NOT found out.
Count Fosco 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.
Marian Halcombe The best men are not consistent in good — why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
Count Fosco Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace—they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship—they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel.
Marian Halcombe Mind, they say, rules the world. But what rules the mind? The body lies at the mercy of the most omnipotent of all potentates—the Chemist.
Count Fosco Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
Walter Hartright No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
Vincent Gilmore The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.
Walter Hartright, on first seeing Laura Fairlie My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.
Mr. Fairlie I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man.
Frederick Fairlie