More from Wilkie Collins
Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
The Woman in White (1860), First Epoch, The Story Begun by Walter Hartright, IXIn contextI am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man.
The Woman in White (1860), Second Epoch, The Story Continued by Frederick Fairlie, Esq., of Limmeridge HouseIn contextWhatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn’t matter, you must have your breakfast.
The Moonstone (1868), First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848), Chapter XIIn context
More about reading
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain1835–1910Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in “Disappearance of Literature”, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain’s Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
