Anthony Trollope Quotes

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 treats his sheep and oxen — makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest stage of degradation. But a title, and an estate, and an income, are matters which will weigh in the balance with all Eve’s daughters — as they do with all Adam’s sons. Pride of place, and the power of living well in front of the world’s eye, are dear to us all; — are, doubtless, intended to be dear. Only in acknowledging so much, let us remember that there are prices at which these good things may be too costly.

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.

I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.

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

She understood how much louder a cock can crow in his own farmyard than elsewhere.

Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.

The bishop did not whistle. We believe that they lose the power of doing so on being consecrated; and that in these days one might as easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop; but he looked as though he would have done so, but for his apron.

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

It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the signboard at the coner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge?

Then in this country a man is to be punished or not, according to his ability to fee a lawyer!

It is a remarkable thing with reference to men who are distressed for money... they never seem at a loss for small sums, or deny themselves those luxuries which small sums purchase. Cabs, dinners, wine, theatres, and new gloves are always at the command of men who are drowned in pecuniary embarrassments, whereas those who don't owe a shilling are so frequently obliged to go without them!

Shall a man have nothing of his own; — no sorrow in his heart, no care in his family, no thought in his breast so private and special to him, but that, if he happen to be a clergyman, the bishop may touch it with his thumb?'
I am not the bishop's thumb,' said Mr. Thumble

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

Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

If it comes to be a question of soul-saving, Mr. Bunce, I shan’t save my place at the expense of my conscience.” “Not if you knows it, you mean. But the worst of it is that a man gets so thick into the mud that he don’t know whether he’s dirty or clean. You’ll have to wote as you’re told, and of course you’ll think it’s right enough. Ain’t you been among Parliament gents long enough to know that that’s the way it goes?