Anthony Trollope Quotes

345 Sourced Quotes

There would be a blaze and a confusion, in which timid men would doubt whether the constitution would be burned to tinder or only illuminated; but that blaze and that confusion would be dear to Mr. Daubney if he could stand as the centre figure, — the great pyrotechnist who did it all, red from head to foot with the glare of the squibs with which his own hands were filling all the spaces.

Anthony Trollope
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?

Anthony Trollope
I show Baby, and Oswald shows the hounds. We've nothing else to interest anybody.

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

Anthony Trollope
To feel that your hours are filled to overflowing, that you can barely steal minutes enough for sleep, that the welfare of many is entrusted to you, that the world looks on and approves, that some good is always being done to others — above all things some good to your country; — that is happiness.

Anthony Trollope
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.

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

Anthony Trollope
Then he would be penniless, with the world before him as a closed oyster to be again opened, and he knew, — no one better, — that this oyster becomes harder and harder in the opening as the man who has to open it becomes older.

Anthony Trollope
There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Anthony Trollope
A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn't win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground.

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

Anthony Trollope
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.

Anthony Trollope
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
No doubt there were other first cousins as badly off, or perhaps worse, as to whom the Duchess would care nothing whether they were rich or poor, — married or single; but then they were first cousins who had not had the advantage of interesting the Duchess.

Anthony Trollope
High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

Anthony Trollope
I know that you have indented to serve your country, and have wished to work for it. But you cannot expect that it should all be roses.
Roses! The nosegays which are worn down at Westminister are made of garlick and dandelions!

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

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

Anthony Trollope
The grace and beauty of life will be clean gone when we all become useful men.

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

Anthony Trollope
Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.

Anthony Trollope
Make all men equal today, and God has so created them that they shall all be unequal tomorrow.

Anthony Trollope
Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

Anthony Trollope
The natural man will probably be manly. The affected man cannot be so.

Anthony Trollope
Men are so seldom really good. They are so little sympathetic. What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.

Anthony Trollope
Making love to a sweet, soft, blushing, willing, though silent girl is a pleasant employment; but the task of declaring love to a stony-hearted, obdurate, ill-conditions Diana is very disagreeable for any gentleman. And it is the more so when the gentleman really loves, — or thinks that he loves, — his Diana.

Anthony Trollope
I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he'll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.

Anthony Trollope
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
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.

Anthony Trollope