Anthony Trollope Quotes

“Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.”

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

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

“If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.”

“Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.”

“Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because they see a table shake and do not know how it is shaken; because they hear a rapping on a board, and cannot see the instrument that raps it; because they are touched in the dark, and do not know the hand that touches them.”

“Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.”

“I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.”

“"I think it is so glorious," said the American. "There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty."”

“Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.”

“Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.”

“But how shall I excuse it? There are things done which are as holy as the heavens, — which are clear before God as the light of the sun, which leave no stain on the conscience, and which yet the malignity of man can invest with the very blackness of hell!”

“That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.”

“Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.”

“To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.”

“The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

“She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.”

“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.”

“There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.”

“Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.”

“Above all else, never think you're not good enough.”

“There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.”

“Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.”

“Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.”

“One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.”

“He don't look the sort of fellow I like; but he's got money and he comes here, and he's good looking, — and therefore he'll be a success.”

“Always remember, Mr. Robarts, that when you go into an attorney's office door, you will have to pay for it, first or last.”

“Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.”

“The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of _____; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected.”

“Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.”

“There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries, than the neccessity of listening to sermons.”

“You Ministers go on shuffling the old cards till they are so worn out and dirty that one can hardly tell the pips on them.”

“It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.”

“He had so accustomed himself to wield the constitutional cat-of-nine-tails, that heaven will hardly be happy to him unless he be allowed to flog the cherubim.”

“Their support was not needed, therefore they were not courted.”

“That girls should not marry for money we are all agreed. A lady who can sell herself for a title or an estate, for an income or a set of family diamonds, treats herself as a farmer teats his sheep and oxen — makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and a soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest state of degradation.”

“But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.”

“He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.”

“Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.”

“Had some inscrutable decree of fate ordained and made it certain, with a certainty not to be disturbed, that no candidate could be returned to Parliament who would not assert the earth to be triangular, there would rise immediately a clamorous assertion of triangularity among political aspirants. The test would be innocent. Candidates have swallowed, and daily do swallow, many a worse one. As might be this doctrine of a great triangle, so is the doctrine of Home Rule. Why is a gentleman of property to be kept out in the cold by some O'Mullins because he will not mutter an unmeaning shibboleth? "Triangular? Yes, or lozenge-shaped, if you please; but, gentleman, I am the man for Tipperary."”

“Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?”

“The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.”

“Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.”

“There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.”

“I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author's written language.”

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

“She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar.”

“Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask for this and all other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“I always thought there was very little wit wanted to make a fortune in the City.”

“There is such a difference between life and theory.”

“When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer.”

“Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.”

“The tenth Muse who now governs the periodical press.”

“To be alone with the girl to whom he is not engaged, is a man's delight; — to be alone with the man to whom she is engaged is the woman's.”

“In the latter days of July in the year 185-, a most important question was for ten days hourly asked in the cathedral city of Barchester, and answered every hour in various ways — Who was to be the new Bishop?”

“There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, — and always to plead it successfully.”

“It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies — who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two — that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself.”

“Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should there have been a Small House?”

“Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.”

“I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.”

“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.”