Wilkie Collins Quotes

Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether.

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.

You never can tell when you send a word, Like an arrow shot from a bow By an archer blind, be it cruel or kind, Just where it may chance to go!

The older you get, the more power you have with language as a writer, which means that you have to be extra responsible for what you say, whether it's in print or in front of a microphone, because those words can go out and kill or go out and plant seeds for peace.

Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.

If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.

Every man has a bag hanging before him, in which he puts his neighbour's faults, and another behind him in which he stows his own.

Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word. Machines won't change human nature.

The other man's arse is always cleaner!

Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child's mind, they are not easily eradicated.

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.

There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.

Words could be just as deadly as steel.

I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.

Words people say not only have a shelf life but have the ability to shape life.

Your words can permanently influence a life.

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.

There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.

Memories contain hidden editorials on current events.

Words can do wonderful things. They pound, purr. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip, whine. They can sing, sass, singe. They can churn, check, channelize. They can be a "Hup two three four." They can forge a fiery army of a hundred languid men.

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.

This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.

Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.