Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

203. “She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.”

— Anthony Trollope

204. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

205. “After that I met that lawyer in the street, and was ashamed to look him in the face. I’m blessed if he didn’t come up and shake hands with me, and tell me that he knew all along that his client hadn’t a leg to stand on. Now I call that beautiful.” “Beautiful!” said Kenneby. “Yes, I do. He fought that battle just as if he was sure of winning, though he knew he was going to lose. Give me the man that can fight a losing battle. Anybody can play whist with four by honours in his own hands.”

— Anthony Trollope

206. “A pleasant letter I hold to be the pleasantest thing that this world has to give.”

— Anthony Trollope

207. “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

208. “Never mingle love and business.”

— Anthony Trollope

209. “What!” said his sensible enemies, “is Johnny not to be taught to read because he does not like it?” “Johnny must read by all means,” would the doctor answer; “but is it necessary that he should not like it? If the preceptor have it in him, may not Johnny learn, not only to read, but to like to learn to read?”

— Anthony Trollope

210. “The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.”

— Anthony Trollope

211. “Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.”

— Anthony Trollope

212. “The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III., which, though they were grand days for the construction of the constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

214. “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

215. “People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know better.”

— Anthony Trollope

216. “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

217. “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

218. “Young men in such matters are so often without any fixed thoughts! They are such absolute moths. They amuse themselves with the light of the beautiful candle, fluttering about, on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, burnt up and reduced to tinder by the consuming fire of matrimony. Happy marriages, men say, are made in heaven, and I believe it.”

— Anthony Trollope

219. “I know very well that men are friends when they step up and shake hands with each other. It is the same as when women kiss.” “When I see women kiss, I always think that there is deep hatred at the bottom of it.”

— Anthony Trollope

220. “No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader’s heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, – truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational.”

— Anthony Trollope

221. “When you have done the rashest thing in the world it is very pleasant to be told that no man of spirit could have acted otherwise.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

224. “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

225. “The Sir Charles Grandison business is done and gone. That’s what you mean, I suppose? Don’t you think we should find it very heavy if we tried to get it back again?” “I’m not going to ask you to be a Sir Charles Grandison, Mr. Eames. But never mind all that now. Do you know that that girl has absolutely had her first sitting for the picture?”

— Anthony Trollope

226. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

228. “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.”

— Anthony Trollope

229. “My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.”

— Anthony Trollope

230. “Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.”

— Anthony Trollope

231. “When it comes to money nobody should give up anything.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

233. “But are no other portraits necessary? Should we not be taught to see the men and women among whom we really live, – men and women such as we are ourselves, – in order that we should know what are the exact failings which oppress ourselves, and thus learn to hate, and if possible to avoid in life the faults of character which in life are hardly visible, but which in portraiture of life can be made to be so transparent.”

— Anthony Trollope

234. “To get away well is so very much! And to get away well is often so very difficult!”

— Anthony Trollope

235. “Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

237. “That is to say, we think you cannot do so. People can do so many things that they don’t think they can do; and can’t do so many things that they think that they can do!”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

239. “I know very well that if you get men who are really, really swells, for that is what it is, Mr. Low, and pay them well enough, and so make it really an important thing, they can browbeat any judge and hoodwink any jury.”

— Anthony Trollope

240. “Home to your own people. How nice! I have no people to go to. I have one sister, who lives with her husband at Riga. She is my only relation, and I never see her.”

— Anthony Trollope

241. “What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife?”

— Anthony Trollope

242. “The truth is so much more real when it comes from things that are near.”

— Anthony Trollope

243. “Upon my word, sir,’said he, ‘I’ve hardly looked at her. It is not a matter of looks now, as it used to be. It has got beyond that. It is not that I am indifferent to seeing a pretty face, or that I have no longer an opinion of my own about a woman’s figure. But there grows up, I think, a longing which almost kills that consideration.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

245. “She was not softly delicate in all her ways; but in disposition and temper she was altogether generous. I do not know that she was at all points a lady, but had Fate so willed it she would have been a thorough gentleman.”

— Anthony Trollope

246. “There is an aptness, a propriety, a fitness in these things which one can understand perhaps better than explain.”

— Anthony Trollope

247. “Lady Glencora in her time had wished to marry a man who had sought her for her money. Lady Chiltern in her time had refused to be Lady Fawn. Madame Goesler in her time had declined to marry an English peer.”

— Anthony Trollope

248. “I know they will murder him,” she said, “and then when it is too late they will find out what they have done!”

— Anthony Trollope

249. “There is no cholera, no yellow-fever, no small-pox more contagious than debt.”

— Anthony Trollope

250. “The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.”

— Anthony Trollope