Anthony Trollope Quotes

You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart.

(John Bold said): If an action is the right one, personal feelings must not be allowed to interfere. Of course I greatly like Mr Harding, but that is no reason for failing in my duty to those old men.

I should give such advice myself, knowing that a friend may give counsel as to outer things, but that a man must satisfy his inner conscience by his own perceptions of what is right and what is wrong.

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

Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?

Mrs Draper took this as an order for her departure, and crept silently out of the room, closing the door behind her with the long protracted elaborate click which is always produced by an attempt at silence on such occasions.

There are some people, if you can only get to learn the length of their feet, you can always fit them with shoes afterwards.

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.

And so in truth she did. Miss Palliser had never analysed her own feelings and emotions about the Spooners whom she met in society; but she probably conceived that there were people in the world who, from certain accidents, were accustomed to sit at dinner with her, but who were no more fitted for her intimacy than were the servants who waited upon her. Such people were to her little more than the tables and chairs with which she was brought in contact. They were persons with whom it seemed to her to be impossible that she should have anything in common, — who were her inferiors, as completely as were the menials around her.

Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a vice.

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

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.

Courtesty and cordiality are not only not the same, but they are incompatible. Why so? Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free.

The most deadly enemies of the Roman Catholics are they who love best their religion as Protestants. When we look to individuals we always find it so, though it hardly suits us to admit as much when we discuss these subjects broadly.