Anthony Trollope Quotes

Audacity in wooing is a great virtue, but a man must measure even his virtues.

No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise man.

There is such a difference between life and theory.

All is fair in love and war; and if this is not love, it was the usual thing that stands as a counterpart for it.

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.

He was essentially a truth-speaking man, if only he know how to speak the truth.

A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you'd like to get.

CHAPTER XVI MR. GOTOBED'S PHILANTHROPY

Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the United States.

But mad people never die. That's a well-known fact. They've nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.

CHAPTER XXXV CHOWTON FARM FOR SALE

Little bits of things make me do it; - perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; - the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver.

The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.

For there is no folly so great as keeping one's sorrows hidden.

Every man to himself is the centre of the whole world; - the axle on which it all turns. All knowledge is but his own perception of the things around him. All love, and care for others, and solicitude for the world's welfare, are but his own feelings as to the world's wants and the world's merits.

[your heart] That is your own estate, your own, your very own, --your own and another's. Whatever may go to the moneylenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that.

Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.

Rest and quiet are the comforts of those who have been content to remain in obscurity.

As the high mountains are intersected by deep valleys, as puritanism in one age begets infidelity in the next, as in many countries the thickness of the winter's ice will be in proportion to the number of the summer musquitoes, so was the keenness of the hostility displayed on this occasion in proportion to the warmth of the support which was manifested. As the great man was praised, so also was he abused.

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

CHAPTER XLI THE SENATOR IS BADLY TREATED

The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.

When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.

Lord Fawn did not immediately recognise the falseness of every word that the woman said to him, because he was slow and could not think and hear at the same time.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house ... An Irish kitchenis usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often, joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.

you may be sure of one thing; I shall always judge my father to be right, and those who oppose him I shall judge to be wrong. If those who do not know him oppose him, I shall have charity enough to believe that they are wrong, through error of judgment; but should I see him attacked by those who ought to know him, and to love him, and revere him, of such I shall be constrained to form a different opinion." And

Those who depart must have earned such sorrow before it can be really felt.

After all, then, she was not a clever woman, - not more clever than other women around her!

Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent.

The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.

CHAPTER LXI THE SUCCESS OF LADY AUGUSTUS

In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.

When a man gets into his head an idea that the public voice calls for him, it is astonishing how great becomes his trust in the wisdom of the public.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee? ... Was ever anything so civil?

Heroes in books should be so much better than heroes got up for the world's common wear and tear

The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III., which, though they were grand days for the construction of the constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description.

He has gone, Mamma,' she said, as she entered the breakfast-room. 'And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways. It has been all Sunday for me the last six weeks.

There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one's mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken away from him in some important crisis of his life, and that his conduct should be arranged for him, either this way or that, by some divine power if it were possible, - by some patriarchal power in the absence of divinity, - or by chance, even, if nothing better than chance could be found to do it? But no one dares to cast the die, and to go honestly by the hazard. There must be the actual necessity of obeying the die, before even the die can be of any use.

A fellow oughtn't to let his family property go to pieces.

I am ready to obey as a child; :;but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason.

Perhaps no terms have been so injurious to the profession of the novelist as those two words, hero and heroine. In spite of the latitude which is allowed to the writer in putting his own interpretation upon these words, something heroic is still expected; whereas, if he attempt to paint from Nature, how little that is heroic
should he describe!

Now, Justinia, you are unfair.

With many women I doubt whether there be any more effectual wayof touching their hearts than ill-using them and then confessing it. If you wish to get the sweetest fragrance from the herb at your feet, tread on it and bruise it.

When he entered the drawing-room she was sitting alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and rounded at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoke three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her.

If I had a husband I should want a good one, a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man's wife.

But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it? Who at least ever declined a love secret? What sister could do so?

And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.

CHAPTER XXI THE FIRST EVENING AT RUFFORD HALL

If a husband be not master of his wife´s heart, he has no right to her fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true.

No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.

He took such high ground that there was no getting on to it.

When it comes to money nobody should give up anything.

CHAPTER XXXIV MARY'S LETTER

He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.

The cigar has been smoked out, and we are the ashes.

He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

Life is so unlike theory.

When men think much, they can rarely decide.

I hate the twaddle talk of love, whether it's about myself or about any one else. It makes me feel ashamed of my sex, when I find out that I cannot talk of myself to another woman without being supposed to be either in love or thinking of love, -- either looking for it or avoiding it. When it comes, if it comes prosperously, it's a very good thing. But I for one can do without it, and I feel myself injured when such a state of things is presumed to be impossible.

She became aware that she had thought the less of him because he had thought the more of her. She had worshipped this other man because he had assumed superiority and had told her that he was big enough to be her master. But now,
now that it was all too late,
the veil had fallen from her eyes. She could now see the difference between manliness and 'deportment.

I do like a little romance ... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.

The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments.

A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.

CHAPTER XV A FIT COMPANION, - FOR ME AND MY SISTERS

As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil.

You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of service to men an women upon the earth

I have passed the period of a woman's life when as a woman she is loved; but I have have not outlived the power of loving.

Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a vice.

Lord Chiltern recognizes the great happiness of having a grievance. It would be a pity that so great a blessing should be thrown away upon him.

Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you'll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston.

Conduct! Is conduct everything? One may conduct oneself excellently, and yet break one's heart.

A physician should take his fee without letting his left hand know what his right is doing; it should be taken without a thought, without a look, without a move of the facial muscles; the true physician should hardly be aware that the last friendly grasp of the hand has been made more precious by the touch of gold

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

It seems to me that if a man can so train himself that he may live honestly and die fearlessly, he has done about as much as is necessary.

He was doing nothing, thinking of nothing, looking at nothing; he was merely suffering.

CHAPTER LXXI 'MY OWN, OWN HUSBAND

Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat the women in numbers by ten to one, and through they certainly speak the louder, the concrete sound that meets the ears of any outside listener is always a sound of women's voices?

On board ship there are many sources of joy of which the land knows nothing. You may flirt and dance at sixty; and if you are awkward in the turn of a valse, you may put it down to the motion of the ship. You need wear no gloves, and may drink your soda-and-brandy without being ashamed of it.

Wine is valued by its price, not its flavour.

CHAPTER XXIX THE SENATOR'S LETTER

In the first place, he is a gentleman," continued Violet. "Then he is a man of spirit. And then he has not too much spirit; - not that kind of spirit which makes some men think that they are the finest things going. His manners are perfect; - not Chesterfieldian, and yet never offensive. He never browbeats any one, and never toadies any one. He knows how to live easily with men of all ranks, without any appearance of claiming a special status for himself. If he were made Archbishop of Canterbury to-morrow, I believe he would settle down into the place of the first subject in the land without arrogance, and without false shame.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.

Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?

They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man, - of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one, - will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber.

Men and women ain't lumps of sugar. They don't melt because the water is sometimes warm.

Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome.

the public is defrauded when it is purposely misled. Poor public! how often is it misled! against what a world of fraud has it to contend!

We are not content in looking to our newspapers for all the information that earth and human intellect can afford; but we demand from them what we might demand if a daily sheet could come to us from the world of spirits. The result, of course, is this, - that the papers do pretend that they have come daily from the world of spirits; but the oracles are very doubtful, as were those of old

People seem to think that if a man is a Member of Parliament he may do what he pleases. ... Being in Parliament used to be something when I was young, but it won't make a make a gentleman now-a-days. It seems to me that none but brewers, and tallow-chandlers, and lawyers go into Parliament now.

He should marry her, - or there should be something done which should make the name of Winifred Hurtle known to the world! She had no plan of revenge yet formed. She would not talk of revenge, - she told herself that she would not even think of revenge till she was quite sure that revenge would be necessary. But she did think of it, and could not keep her thoughts from it for a moment. Could it be possible that she, with all her intellectual gifts as well as those of her outward person, should be thrown over by a man whom well as she loved him, - and she did love him with all her heart, - she regarded as greatly inferior to herself! He had promised to marry her; and he should marry her, or the world should hear the story of his perjury!

Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.

Those who offend us are generally punished for the offence they give; but we so frequently miss the satisfaction of knowing that we are avenged !.

Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.