Anthony Trollope Quotes

There are general laws current in the world as to morality. 'Thou shalt not steal,' for instance. That has “necessarily been current as a law through all nations. But the first man you meet in the street will have ideas about theft so different from yours, that, if you knew them as you know your own, you would say that this law and yours were not even founded on the same principle.

"It is seldom that we know anything accurately on any subject that we have not made matter of careful study," said Mr. Monk, "and very often do not do so even then. We are very apt to think that we men and women understand one another; but most probably you know nothing even of the modes of thought of the man who lives next door to you."

There are moments in which stupid people say clever things, obtuse people say sharp things, and good-natured people say ill-natured things.

It was one of the tenets of her life — the strongest, perhaps, of all those doctrines on which she built her faith — that this world is a world of woe; that wailing and suffering, if not gnashing of teeth, is and should be the condition of mankind preparatory to eternal bliss.

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

Did you ever know a poor man made better by law or a lawyer!' said Bunce bitterly.

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

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.

Of course he had committed forgery; — of course he had committed robbery. That, indeed, was nothing, for he had been cheating and forging and stealing all his life.

Buying and selling is good and necessary; it is very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but it cannot be the noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman.

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

There are men whose energies hardly ever carry them beyond looking for the thing they want.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness.

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

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