Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

3. “Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.”

— Anthony Trollope

4. “Above all else, never think you’re not good enough.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

6. “Of all needs a book has, the chief need is to be readable.”

— Anthony Trollope

7. “The writer of stories must please, or he will be nothing. And he must teach whether he wish to teach or no. How.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

9. “Audacity in wooing is a great virtue, but a man must measure even his virtues.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

11. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

12. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

13. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

14. “But facts always convince, and another man’s opinion rarely convinces.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

16. “The grace and beauty of life will be clean gone when we all become useful men.”

— Anthony Trollope

17. “Familiarity does breed contempt; – doesn’t it?”

— Anthony Trollope

18. “The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.”

— Anthony Trollope

19. “A low voice is an excellent thing in woman.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

21. “Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.”

— Anthony Trollope

22. “That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.”

— Anthony Trollope

23. “Solve senescentem.”

— Anthony Trollope

24. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

25. “It’s dogged as does it. It ain’t thinking about it.”

— Anthony Trollope

26. “Success is a poison that should only be taken late in life and then only in small doses.”

— Anthony Trollope

27. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

29. “Every man to himself is the centre of the whole world; – the axle on which it all turns. All knowledge is but his own perception of the things around him. All love, and care for others, and solicitude for the world’s welfare, are but his own feelings as to the world’s wants and the world’s merits.”

— Anthony Trollope

30. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

31. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

32. “The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.”

— Anthony Trollope

33. “The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

37. “Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

39. “She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

42. “Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.”

— Anthony Trollope

Featured in: Romance Quotes

43. “A liar has many points to his favour, – but he has this against him, that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally.”

— Anthony Trollope

44. “Nothing surely is as potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small dainty task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

— Anthony Trollope

45. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

46. “Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

48. “Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.”

— Anthony Trollope

49. “I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he’ll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.”

— Anthony Trollope

50. “Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.”

— Anthony Trollope