Anthony Trollope Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin. These are the gifts we want, but we can't always get them, and have to do without them.

He possessed the tact of becoming instantly intimate with women without giving rise to any fear of impertinence. He had about him somewhat of the propensities of a tame cat. It seemed quite natural that he should be petted, caressed, and treated with familiar good nature, and that in return he should purr, and be sleek and graceful, and above all never show his claws. Like other tame cats, however, he had his claws, and sometimes made them dangerous.

The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion

She became aware that she had thought the less of him because he had thought the more of her. She had worshipped this other man because he had assumed superiority and had told her that he was big enough to be her master. But now, — now that it was all too late, — the veil had fallen from her eyes. She could now see the difference between manliness and 'deportment.

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.

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, — truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational.

In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.

Wounds sometimes must be opened in order that they may be healed.

She was not softly delicate in all her ways; but in disposition and temper she was altogether generous. I do not know that she was at all points a lady, but had Fate so willed it she would have been a thorough gentleman.

He liked to be kindly treated, to be praised and petted, to be well fed and caressed; and they who so treated him were his chosen friends. He had in this the instincts of a horse, not approaching the higher sympathies of a dog.