Anthony Trollope Quotes

It might have been seen, I said, with half an eye, that Mr. Broughton did not like the state of the money-market; and it might also be seen with the other half that he had been endeavouring to mitigate the bitterness of his dislike by alcoholic aid. Musselboro at once perceived that his patron and partner was half drunk, and Crosbie was aware that he had been drinking.

If I had a husband I should want a good one, a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man's wife.

Men who think much want to speak often,

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?

And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from the principles of story telling to which you probably have become accustomed and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, — so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being, or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest, — should you choose to go on with my chronicle, — simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, — before Mrs. Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle. You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the kind of interest of which I am speaking – and of which I intend to deprive myself, — is not the most natural and the most efficacious. What would the ‘Black Dwarf’ be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet? – or ‘The Pirate,’ if all the truth about Norna of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefore, put the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph, — in the next half-dozen words. Mr and Mrs Peacocke were not man and wife.

Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?

As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.

Of all such reformers Mr. Sentiment is the most powerful. It is incredible the number of evil practices he has put down: it is to be feared he will soon lack subjects and that when he has made the working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into proper-sized pint bottles, there will be nothing further for him left to do. Mr. Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and perhaps not the less so that his good poor people are so very good; his hard rich people so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very honest. Namby-pamby in these days is not thrown away if it be introduced in the proper quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting, though possessed of every virtue; but a pattern peasant or an immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much twaddle as one of Mrs. Ratcliffe's heroines, and still be listened to. Perhaps, however, Mr. Sentiment's great attraction is in his second-rate characters. If his heroes and heroines walk upon stilts as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever must, their attendant satellites are as natural as though one met them in the street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our friends a rattling, lively life — yes, live, and will live till the names of their callings shall be forgotten in their own, and Buckett and Mrs. Gamp will be the only words left to us to signify detective police officer or a monthly nurse.

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.

I have all the world to choose from, but no reason whatever for a choice.

They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. 'Fine day,' he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly's elbow.
'We were driving to-day and we thought it rather cold,' said Griselda.
'Deuced cold,' said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie.
'This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,' said that lady, coming up to him and shaking his hand warmly; 'so very kind of you to come to my poor little tea-party.'
'Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,' said his lordship. 'I like this sort of thing — no trouble, you know.'
'No; that is the charm of it: isn't it? no trouble or fuss, or parade. That's what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts — what we call conversation.'
'Aw, yes, exactly.'
'Not in eating and drinking together — eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world in this has surely made a great mistake.'
'I like a good dinner all the same,' said Lord Dumbello.
'Oh, yes, of course — of course. I am by no means one of those who would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?'
'A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,' said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.
'An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating — can we?'
'No,' said Lord Dumbello, 'not always.' And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.

She had seen no one who had so touched her. But she was alive to the romance of the thing, and was in love with the idea of being in love.

Mary, it must be remembered, was very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so often said before, 'Women grow on the sunny side of the wall.

Now, Justinia, you are unfair.

There was very much in the whole affair of which he would not be proud as he led his bride to the altar; — but a man does not expect to get four thousand pounds a year for nothing.