Anthony Trollope quotes:

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men.

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.

I do like a little romance... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.

They are best dressed, whose dress no one observes.

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

But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.

A husband is very much like a house or a horse.

Life is so unlike theory.

As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.

A fellow oughtn't to let his family property go to pieces.

Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.

I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

I do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.

There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.

A woman's weapon is her tongue.

Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man's honesty thanthat?of knowing himselftobe quiteloved by a girl whom he almost loves himself.

A farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go. Never throws out curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master he is never showy. He does not paw and prance, and arch his neck, and bid the world admire his beauties...and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.

The law is a great thing,--because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, and of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?

In former days, when there were Whigs instead of Liberals, it was almost a rule of political life that all leading Whigs sould be uncles, brothers-in-law, or cousins to each other. This was pleasant and gave great consistency to the party; but the system has now gone out of vogue.

There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.

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.

Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.

Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.

It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.

Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.

Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.

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

A man's mind will very gradually refuse to make itself up until it is driven and compelled by emergency.

No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.

Gentlemen lacking substantial sympathy with their leader found it to be comfortable to deceive themselves, and raise their hearts at the same time by the easy enthusiasm of noise.

I have never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money.

He must have known me if he had seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognize me by my face.

It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M.P. written after his name. No selection from the alphabet, no doctorship, no fellowship, be it of ever so learned or royal a society, no knightship,--not though it be of the Garter,--confers so fair an honour.

The best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.

Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.

This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.

It is very difficult to say nowadays where the suburbs of London come to an end and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country have turned the countryside into a city.

The idea of putting old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members of Parliament generally.

And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.

Those who offend us are generally punished for the offence they give; but we so frequently miss the satisfaction of knowing that we are avenged !.

Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent.

Passionate love, I take it, rarely lasts long, and is very troublesome while it does last. Mutual esteem is very much more valuable.

Cham is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.

It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.

Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.

I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.

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.

The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.

A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel

It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all that he is fit to do.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.

Beware of creating tedium!

But mad people never die. That's a well-known fact. They've nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.

A woman's life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man's life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable.

Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else, will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.

Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it.

There was but one thing for him;- to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

Of all hatreds that the world produces, a wife's hatred for her husband, when she does hate him, is the strongest.

It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.

The happiest man is he, who being above the troubles which money brings, has his hands the fullest of work.

Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.

Of course, Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.

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 reaches us that they have done so.

Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left--something dim and inaccurate--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.

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.

When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer.

Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you'll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.

I cannot hold with those who want to put down the insignificant chatter of the world

Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.

When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.

On board ship there are many sources of joy of which the land knows nothing. You may flirt and dance at sixty; and if you are awkward in the turn of a valse, you may put it down to the motion of the ship. You need wear no gloves, and may drink your soda-and-brandy without being ashamed of it.

Above all else, never think you're not good enough.

A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn't win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground.

The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.

An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.

When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness.

Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.

No other American city is so intensely American as New York.

But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?

Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.

After money in the bank, a grudge is the next best thing.