Anthony Trollope: Doing

Anthony Trollope was English novelist (1815-1882). Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Anthony Trollope: 256 quotes5 likes

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

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

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

“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.”

Anthony Trollope

The New Zealander (1965), p. 73

“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.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

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

“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."”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

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

“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.”

Anthony Trollope

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 6

“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

“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)

“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

“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

“It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”

Anthony Trollope book Phineas Finn

Source: Phineas Finn (1869), Ch. 13