Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

153. “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

154. “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

155. “Flirting I take to be the excitement of love, without its reality, and without its ordinary result in marriage.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

161. “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

162. “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

163. “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

164. “The best education is to be had at a price, as well as the best broadcloth.”

— Anthony Trollope

165. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

171. “It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite.”

— Anthony Trollope

172. “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

173. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

175. “Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels.”

— Anthony Trollope

176. “Jacob was not in such a hurry when he wished for Rachel.” “That was all very well for an old patriarch who had seven or eight hundred years to live.” “My dear John, you forget your Bible. Jacob did not live half as long as that.”

— Anthony Trollope

177. “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

178. “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

179. “True love, true friendship, true benevolence, true tenderness, were beautiful to her, – qualities on which she could descant almost with eloquence; and therefore she was always shamming love and friendship and benevolence and tenderness.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

182. “But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— 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. “Never mingle love and business.”

— Anthony Trollope

187. “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

188. “But women can bear anything better than desertion. Cruelty is bad, but neglect is worse than cruelty, and desertion worse even than neglect.”

— Anthony Trollope

189. “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

190. “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

191. “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

192. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

194. “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

195. “It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing.”

— Anthony Trollope

196. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

198. “Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”

— Anthony Trollope

199. “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. She would be constant with him day and night to make him understand that his duty to his country required him to be in very truth its chief ruler.”

— Anthony Trollope

200. “Publish what, you unreasonable man?” “Man! sir; whom do you call a man? I’ll let you know whether I’m a man – post-chaise there!” “Don’t ‘ee call him names now, doctor; don’t ‘ee, pray don’t ‘ee,” said Lady Scatcherd. By this time they had all got somewhere nearer the hall-door; but the Scatcherd retainers were too fond of the row to absent themselves willingly at Dr Fillgrave’s bidding, and it did not appear that any one went in search of the post-chaise.”

— Anthony Trollope