Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “Well, then, I’ll hope in this case. But, uncle – ” “Well, my dear?” “I want your opinion, truly and really. If you were a girl – ” “I am perfectly unable to give any opinion founded on so strange an hypothesis.”

— Anthony Trollope

154. “I should give such advice myself, knowing that a friend may give counsel as to outer things, but that a man must satisfy his inner conscience by his own perceptions of what is right and what is wrong.”

— Anthony Trollope

155. “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

156. “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

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157. “Grace was allowed to return by Silverbridge, and to take what was needed from Miss Prettyman. Who can tell of the mending and patching, of the weary wearing midnight hours of needlework which were accomplished before the poor girl went, so that she might not reach her friend’s house in actual rags?”

— Anthony Trollope

158. “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

159. “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

160. “Then Mrs. Grantly, working hard in her vocation as a peacemaker, changed the conversation again, and began to talk of the American war. But even that was made matter of discord on church matters, – the archdeacon professing an opinion that the Southerners were Christian gentlemen, and the Northerners infidel snobs; whereas Mrs. Proudie had an idea that the Gospel was preached with genuine zeal in the Northern States.”

— Anthony Trollope

161. “Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant.”

— Anthony Trollope

162. “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

163. “There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.”

— Anthony Trollope

164. “If a cook can’t make soup between two and seven, she can’t make it in a week.”

— Anthony Trollope

165. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

166. “The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician’s life.”

— Anthony Trollope

167. “No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented.”

— Anthony Trollope

168. “As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

170. “Loughshane, according to Barrington Erle, was so small a place, that the expense would be very little. There were altogether no more than 307 registered electors. The inhabitants were so far removed from the world, and were so ignorant of the world’s good things, that they knew nothing about bribery.”

— Anthony Trollope

171. “Who would ever think of learning to live out of an English novel?”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

173. “A man who is supposed to have caused a disturbance between two married people, in a certain rank of life, does generally receive a certain meed of admiration.”

— Anthony Trollope

174. “A man may have the best of causes, the best of talents, and the best of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as strongly as Junius; but even with all this he cannot successfully answer, when attacked by The Jupiter. In such matters it is omnipotent. What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that The Jupiter is in England. Answer such an article! No, warden; whatever you do, don’t do that.”

— Anthony Trollope

175. “I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.”

— Anthony Trollope

176. “But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me – my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool, – as a bewildered idiot.”

— Anthony Trollope

177. “To oblige a friend by inflicting an injury on his enemy is often more easy than to confer a benefit on the friend himself.”

— Anthony Trollope

178. “And you know, aunt, I still hope that I shall be found to have kept on the right side of the posts. You will find that poor Lord Chiltern is not so black as he is painted.’ ‘But why take anybody that is black at all?’ ‘I like a little shade in the picture, aunt.”

— Anthony Trollope

179. “They two men cut the door, and took the box, and opened it, – and when they’d opened it, they didn’t get the swag. Where was the swag?”

— Anthony Trollope

180. “It is seldom that we know anything accurately on any subject that we have not made matter of careful study,” said Mr. Monk, “and very often do not do so even then. We are very apt to think that we men and women understand one another; but most probably you know nothing even of the modes of thought of the man who lives next door to you.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

182. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

183. “There are moments in which stupid people say clever things, obtuse people say sharp things, and good-natured people say ill-natured things.”

— Anthony Trollope

184. “The form and face of Lady Eustace, which indeed were very lovely, were distasteful to her; whereas she delighted to look upon the broad, plain, colourless countenance of Lydia Fawn, who was endeared to her by frank good humour and an unselfish disposition. In regard to men she had never asked herself the question whether this man was handsome or that man ugly.”

— Anthony Trollope

185. “Then Lady Chiltern argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband.”

— Anthony Trollope

186. “Wine is valued for its price, not its flavor.”

— Anthony Trollope

187. “It may, indeed, be assumed that a man who loses his temper while he is speaking is endeavouring to speak the truth such as he believes it to be, and again it may be assumed that a man who speaks constantly without losing his temper is not always entitled to the same implicit faith.”

— Anthony Trollope

188. “As he had said to his daughter, no one knows where the shoe pinches but the wearer. There are some points on which no man can be contented to follow the advice of another, – some subjects on which a man can consult his own conscience only. Our warden had made up his mind that it was good for him at any cost to get rid of this grievance; his daughter was the only person whose concurrence appeared necessary to him, and she did concur with him most heartily.”

— Anthony Trollope

189. “Greystock brought with him two guns, two fishing-rods, a man-servant, and a huge hamper from Fortnum and Mason’s.”

— Anthony Trollope

190. “The night was bright with stars, but there was no moon in the heavens, and the gloom of the ivy-coloured church tower was complete. But all the outlines of the place were so well known to him that he could trace them all in the dim light.”

— Anthony Trollope

191. “If you pardon all the evil done to you, you encourage others to do you evil!”

— Anthony Trollope

192. “Marry Oswald, and be your own mistress.” “I mean to be my own mistress without marrying Oswald, though I don’t see my way quite clearly as yet. I think I shall set up a little house of my own, and let the world say what it pleases. I suppose they couldn’t make me out to be a lunatic.”

— Anthony Trollope

193. “Morning parties, as a rule, are failures. People never know how to get away from them gracefully.”

— Anthony Trollope

194. “When last days are coming, they should be allowed to come and to glide away without special notice or mention. And as for last moments, there should be none such. Let them ever be ended, even before their presence has been acknowledged.”

— Anthony Trollope

195. “What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

197. “I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described.”

— Anthony Trollope

198. “Wounds sometimes must be opened in order that they may be healed.”

— Anthony Trollope

199. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

200. “There is the review intended to sell a book, – which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him.”

— Anthony Trollope