It's very dangerous to believe people, I haven't for years. - Agatha Christie

Perhaps a little of Trollope, but not to drown in him.

"You know that in all tombs there is always a false door?" Renisenb stared. "Yes, of course." "Well, people are like that too. They create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is a bare rock … And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself."

A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves