Anthony Trollope Quotes

It was true, however, that he sometimes startled his hearers by things which might have been considered to border on coarseness if they had not been said by a clergyman.

Now, now that she was older and perhaps wiser, love meant a partnership, in which each partner would be honest to the other, in which each would wish and strive for the other's welfare, to that this their joint welfare might be insured. Then, in those early girlish days, it had meant a total abnegation of self. The one was of earth, and therefore possible. The other had been a ray from heaven, - and impossible, except in a dream.

But Johnny hasn’t got twelve children, Tom.” “One doesn’t have a cousin in trouble every day,” said Toogood. “And then you see there’s something very pretty in the case. It’s quite a pleasure getting it up.

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows,

I sometimes think you despise poetry,' said Phineas.
'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.

Lady Linlithgow was worldly, stingy, ill-tempered, selfish, and mean. Lady Linlithgow would cheat a butcher out of a mutton-chop, or a cook out of a month’s wages, if she could do so with some slant of legal wind in her favour. She would tell any number of lies to carry a point in what she believed to be social success. It was said of her that she cheated at cards. In back-biting, no venomous old woman between Bond Street and Park Lane could beat her, — or, more wonderful still, no venomous old man at the clubs. But nevertheless she recognised certain duties,

And then she began to think about Lady Glencora herself. What a strange, weird nature she was, — with her round blue eyes and wavy hair, looking sometimes like a child and sometimes almost like an old woman! And how she talked! What things she said, and what terrible forebodings she uttered of stranger things that she meant to say!

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.

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reach us that they have done so.

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.

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?

Familiarity does breed contempt; — doesn’t it?

he was doing nothing, thinking of nothing, looking at nothing; he was merely suffering.

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

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.