Wilkie Collins Quotes
But I am a just man, even to my enemy - and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer brains than I thought them
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Sampson Low, Son, & Co., 1860.
Note that the two do NOT ALWAYS coincide. There are those who argue that law should be respected, right or wrong. There are also those who argue that law should be respected, only when it is in the right. Note also that “respect” and “obedience” are two different things. Some people argue that law and the courts and government must have respect. Others that they are only due obedience but not necessarily respect when they are in the wrong. Still others, like Thoreau, that obedience even is not required when the law is wrong. There are those who take this to the degree that obedience to a “wrong” law is wrong and there is a DUTY to disobey a wrong law. However, a more nuanced view does not treat all laws as the same importance. I may think a particular tax is unjust and wrong, but obedience does not necessarily have moral consequences. A law that says that people with a certain religion must not be hired, however, is sufficiently immoral that I am obliged to disobey it.
It was later published in Q.E.d. Book 1, From Q.E.D and Other Early Writings, 1971
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known for The Woman in White (1859), and for The Moonstone (1868), which has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the London painter William Collins and his wife, the family moved to Italy when Collins was twelve, living there and in France for two years, which allowed the author to learn Italian and French. He worked initially as a tea merchant. After publishing Antonina, his first novel, in 1850, Collins met Charles Dickens, who became a friend and mentor. Some Collins works first appeared in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round. The two also collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but began to suffer from gout. He took opium for the pain, but became addicted to it. His health and his writing quality then declined in the 1870s and 1880s. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between widow Caroline Graves – living with her for most of his adult life, treating her daughter as his – and the younger Martha Rudd, by whom he had three children.
