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.

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About Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was a 19th-century English novelist and playwright. William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1860), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Beauty — Appreciating aesthetics, grace, and the sublime
  • Nature — Appreciation for the natural world and our place within it
  • Poetry — The art of language, rhythm, and emotional expression
  • Time — Reflections on the passage of time and how we spend it

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