Anthony Trollope Quotes

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.

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.

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.

Throughout the world, the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at wrong done to him.

Their support was not needed, therefore they were not courted.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.

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.

A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

The end of a novel, like the end of children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum

He had so accustomed himself to wield the constitutional cat-of-nine-tails, that heaven will hardly be happy to him unless he be allowed to flog the cherubim.

Oh, that that old man in Westmoreland would die and be gathered to his fathers, now that he was full of years and ripe for the sickle! But there was no sign of death about the old man.

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.

He never quarreled with his wife, but he never talked to her; — he never had time to talk, he was so taken up with speaking.

every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter.

I have passed the period of a woman's life when as a woman she is loved; but I have have not outlived the power of loving.