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Anthony Trollope Quotes
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Anthony Trollope was an English novelist of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters.Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he had regained the esteem of critics by the mid-20th century. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. April 1815 – 6. December 1882
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Anthony Trollope: 128   quotes 5   likes

Anthony Trollope Quotes

“It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story "The Great Orley Farm Case." But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore, — Orley Farm.”

Anthony Trollope book Orley Farm

Source: Orley Farm (1862), Ch. 1, first lines.

“Let her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit at forty, let her show that she is so.”

Anthony Trollope book The Small House at Allington

Source: The Small House at Allington (1864), Ch. 3

“It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.”

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 23

Love , Life

“You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 12

“No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.”

Anthony Trollope

The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 27

Thinking

“Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.”

Anthony Trollope

The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=BKwxAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Those+who+have+courage+to+love+should+have+courage+to+suffer%22&pg=PA77#v=onepage

Love , Courage , Suffering

“Because we have been removing restraints on Papal aggression, while other nations have been imposing restraints. There are those at Rome who believe all England to be Romish at heart, because here in England a Roman Catholic can say what he will, and print what he will.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 12

Heart

“She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.”

Anthony Trollope book Barchester Towers

Source: Barchester Towers (1857), Ch. 9

Secret

“The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalising the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

Home

“It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 11

“There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.”

Anthony Trollope

Is He Popenjoy? (1878), Ch. 18

Falseness

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

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 9

Thinking

“Each thought himself, especially since this last promotion, to be indispensably necessary to the formation of London society, and was comfortable in the conviction that he had thoroughly succeeded in life by acquiring the privilege of sitting down to dinner three times a week with peers and peeresses.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

Life , Time

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

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 21

Books , World , Tear

“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.”

Anthony Trollope book He Knew He Was Right

He Knew He Was Right (1869), Ch. 60

Evil

“I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.”

Anthony Trollope book The Small House at Allington

Source: The Small House at Allington (1864), Ch. 4

Girl , Lovers

“She certainly had a little syllogism in her head as to the Duke ruling the borough, the Duke's wife ruling the Duke, and therefore the Duke's wife ruling the borough; but she did not think it prudent to utter this on the present occasion.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 21

Thinking

“A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.”

Anthony Trollope book Ayala's Angel

Ayala's Angel (1881), Ch. 41

“The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; — a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 5

Lie , Girl , Chance

“Is it not remarkable that the common repute which we all give to attorneys in the general is exactly opposite to that which every man gives to his own attorney in particular? Whom does anybody trust so implicitly as he trusts his own attorney? And yet is it not the case that the body of attorneys is supposed to be the most roguish body in existence?”

Anthony Trollope Miss Mackenzie

Miss Mackenzie (1865), Ch. 17

“The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.”

Anthony Trollope book Barchester Towers

Source: Barchester Towers (1857), Ch. 53

Children

“She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.”

Anthony Trollope book Phineas Finn

Source: Phineas Finn (1869), Ch. 57

“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.”

Anthony Trollope book Doctor Thorne

Source: Doctor Thorne (1858), Ch. 25

“Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain.”

Anthony Trollope book Phineas Finn

Ch. 72 http://books.google.com/books?id=Jy1MAAAAcAAJ&q=%22Money+is+neither+god+nor+devil+that+it+should+make+one+noble+and+another+vile+It+is+an+accident+and+if+honestly+possessed+may+pass+from+you+to+me+or+from+me+to+you+without+stain%22&pg=PA269#v=onepage, St. Paul's Magazine, April 1869 http://books.google.com/books?id=wkBJAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Money+is+neither+god+nor+devil+that+it+should+make+one+noble+and+another+vile+It+is+an+accident+and+if+honestly+possessed+may+pass+from+you+to+me+or+from+me+to+you+without+stain%22&pg=PA126#v=onepage
Phineas Finn (1869)

Money , God

“It's dogged as does it. It's not thinking about it.”

Anthony Trollope

Vol. II, ch. 61
(1867)

Dogs , Thinking

“He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

Business

“One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 10

“He could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied himself continually.”

Anthony Trollope

The Life of Cicero (1880)

“Speaking of New York as a traveller I have two faults to find with it. In the first place there is nothing to see; and in the second place there is no mode of getting about to see anything.”

Anthony Trollope

Source: North America (1862), Ch. 14

Travel

“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.”

Anthony Trollope book The Small House at Allington

Source: The Small House at Allington (1864), Ch. 14

Wisdom , Question

“Sir Timothy was a fluent speaker, and when there was nothing to be said was possessed of a great plenty of words. And he was gifted with that peculiar power which enables a man to have the last word in every encounter, — a power which we are apt to call repartee, which is in truth the readiness which comes from continual practice. You shall meet two men of whom you shall know the one to be endowed with the brilliancy of true genius, and the other to be possessed of but moderate parts, and shall find the former never able to hold his own against the latter. In a debate, the man of moderate parts will seem to be greater than the man of genius. But this skill of tongue, this glibness of speech is hardly an affair of intellect at all. It is, — as is style to the writer, — not the wares which he has to take to market, but the vehicle in which they may be carried. Of what avail to you is it to have filled granaries with corn if you cannot get your corn to the consumer? Now Sir Timothy was a great vehicle, but he had not in truth much corn to send.”

Anthony Trollope book The Duke's Children

Source: The Duke's Children (1879), Ch. 26

Men , Truth , Parting

“Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.”

Anthony Trollope book Doctor Thorne

First lines
Doctor Thorne (1858)

Country

“The affair simply amounted to this, that they were to eat their dinner uncomfortably in a field instead of comfortably in the dining room.”

Anthony Trollope

On a picnic, in Can You Forgive Her? (1864), Ch. 78

“Needless to deny that the normal London plumber is a dishonest man. We do not even allow ourselves to think so. That question, as to the dishonesty of mankind generally, is one that disturbs us greatly; — whether a man in all grades of life will by degrees train his honesty to suit his own book, so that the course of life which he shall bring himself to regard as soundly honest shall, if known to his neighbours, subject him to their reproof. We own to a doubt whether the honesty of a bishop would shine bright as the morning star to the submissive ladies who now worship him, if the theory of life upon which he lives were understood by them in all its bearings.”

Anthony Trollope

The Plumber (1880)

Life , Books , Star , Question

“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.”

Anthony Trollope

Source: North America (1862), Ch. 2

Men

“A man's own dinner is to himself so important that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent to every one else.”

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 10

Indifference

“The town horse, used to gaudy trappings, no doubt despises the work of his country brother; but yet, now and again, there comes upon him a sudden desire to plough.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 8

Horse , Country

“People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 37

People

“When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.”

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 1, first lines

Men

“The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.”

Anthony Trollope

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 10

World , Spring , Nature

“It is a remarkable thing with reference to men who are distressed for money… they never seem at a loss for small sums, or deny themselves those luxuries which small sums purchase. Cabs, dinners, wine, theatres, and new gloves are always at the command of men who are drowned in pecuniary embarrassments, whereas those who don't owe a shilling are so frequently obliged to go without them!”

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Framley Parsonage (1861)

Men , Money , Wine , Loss

“Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that is comes early.”

Anthony Trollope book Orley Farm

Source: Orley Farm (1862), Ch. 49

Life , Success

“As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.”

Anthony Trollope

Letter to G W Rusden (8 June 1876), published in The Letters of Anthony Trollope (1983), p. 691

Life , Parent

“One of her instructors in fashion had given her to understand that curls were not the thing. "They'll always pass muster," Miss Dunstable had replied, "when they are done up with bank notes."”

Anthony Trollope book Doctor Thorne

Source: Doctor Thorne (1858), Ch. 16

Fashion , Understanding

“As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, — in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.”

Anthony Trollope

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 11

Men

“Marvellous 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.”

Anthony Trollope book Rachel Ray

Rachel Ray (1863), Ch. 11

Exercises , Personality

“Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.”

Anthony Trollope

Vol. II, ch. 67
(1867)

Love , Spring

“This was Barrington Erle, a politician of long standing, who was still looked upon by many as a young man, because he had always been known as a young man, and because he had never done anything to compromise his position in that respect. He had not married, or settled himself down in a house of his own, or become subject to the gout, or given up being careful about the fitting of his clothes.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 11

Housing , Clothes

“I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.”

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 10

World

“There are worse things than a lie… I have found… that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.”

Anthony Trollope book Doctor Wortle's School

Doctor Wortle's School (1881) Ch. 6

Lie