Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without a chance of a quarrel; but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice.”

— Anthony Trollope

102. “It is the test of a novel writer’s art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.”

— Anthony Trollope

103. “Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.”

— Anthony Trollope

104. “A fellow oughtn’t to let his family property go to pieces.”

— Anthony Trollope

105. “Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.”

— Anthony Trollope

106. “Mr. Turveydrop, the great professor of deportment, has done much.”

— Anthony Trollope

107. “The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

109. “Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

112. “They thought that they loved each other: – each thought so; but there was no love, no sympathy, no warmth. The very atmosphere was cold, – so cold that no fire could remove the chill.”

— Anthony Trollope

113. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

114. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

115. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

117. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

118. “When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

120. “I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

122. “The so-called Conservative, the conscientious, philanthropic Conservative, seeing this, and being surely convinced that such inequalities are of divine origin, tells himself that it is his duty to preserve them.”

— Anthony Trollope

123. “To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.”

— Anthony Trollope

124. “It is not so in the United States. There the same political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear each other limb from limb. I doubt whether Mr. Daubeny would have injured a hair of Mr. Mildmay’s venerable head, even for an assurance of six continued months in office.”

— Anthony Trollope

125. “During his prison days his wife had to support herself as she might. The decent articles of furniture which they had put together were sold; she gave up their little house, and, bowed down by misery, she also was brought near to death. When he was liberated he at once got work; but those who have watched the lives of such people know how hard it is for them to recover lost ground.”

— Anthony Trollope

126. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

127. “I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

129. “Yes; – if there were children. And it will come back to her if he dies first. But mad people never do die. That’s a well-known fact. They’ve nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever. It’ll all go to some cousin of his that nobody ever saw.”

— Anthony Trollope

130. “It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness.”

— Anthony Trollope

131. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

132. “There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.”

— Anthony Trollope

133. “Few men do understand the nature of a woman’s heart till years have robbed such understanding of its value.”

— Anthony Trollope

134. “Fighting! There’s no fighting wanted, as you know well enough. Men don’t fight nowadays.”

— Anthony Trollope

135. “My dear,” said the elder Duke, “I do not think that in my time any innocent man has ever lost his life upon the scaffold.” “Is that a reason why our friend should be the first instance?” said the Duchess.”

— Anthony Trollope

136. “He, as he told his tale, did not look her in the face, but sat with his eyes fixed upon her muff.”

— Anthony Trollope

137. “I suppose there is an outside power, – the people, or public opinion, or whatever they choose to call it. And the country will have to go very much as that outside power chooses.”

— Anthony Trollope

138. “I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, no because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist’s first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.”

— Anthony Trollope

139. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

140. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

141. “There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty.”

— Anthony Trollope

142. “I don’t want no notoriety. I wants to earn my bread peaceable, and to be let alone when I’m about my own business. I pays rates for the police to look after rogues, not to haul folks about and lock ’em up for days and nights, who is doing what they has a legal right to do.”

— Anthony Trollope

143. “He had a pride in being a poor man of a high family; he had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he was proud; and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently to himself.”

— Anthony Trollope

144. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

145. “Mrs Greenow had told Captain Bellfield at their last meeting before she left Norwich, that, under certain circumstances, if he behaved himself well, there might possibly be ground of hope. Whereupon Captain Bellfield had immediately gone to the best tailor in that city, had told the man of his coming marriage, and had given an extensive order. But the tailor had not as yet supplied the goods, waiting for more credible evidence of the Captain’s good fortune.”

— Anthony Trollope

146. “But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?”

— Anthony Trollope

147. “When any practice has become the fixed rule of the society in which we live, it is always wise to adhere to that rule, unless it call upon us to do something that is actually wrong. One should not offend the prejudices of the world, even if one is quite sure that they are prejudices.”

— Anthony Trollope

148. “She had no startling brilliancy of beauty, no pearly whiteness, no radiant carnation. She had not the majestic contour that rivets attention, demands instant wonder, and then disappoints by the coldness of its charms. You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart.”

— Anthony Trollope

149. “I told him that he must ask his friends; – that I would not be his wife to be rejected by them all. Nor will I. Though it be heaven I will not creep there through a hole. If I cannot go in with my head upright, I will not go even there.” Then she turned round as though she were prepared in her emotion to walk back to the house alone. But Lady Mary ran after her, and having caught her, put her arm round her waist and kissed her.”

— Anthony Trollope

150. “There are general laws current in the world as to morality. ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ for instance. That has “necessarily been current as a law through all nations. But the first man you meet in the street will have ideas about theft so different from yours, that, if you knew them as you know your own, you would say that this law and yours were not even founded on the same principle.”

— Anthony Trollope