Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “Love is involuntary. It does not often run in a yoke with prudence.”

— Anthony Trollope

203. “Never mingle love and business.”

— Anthony Trollope

204. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

206. “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

207. “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

208. “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

Featured in: Romance Quotes

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

211. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

213. “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

214. “But Mr. Daubeny, as soon as he had made his statement, stalked out of the House, and no reply whatever was made to the independent Members. Some few sublime and hot-headed gentlemen muttered the word “impeachment.” Others, who were more practical and less dignified, suggested that the Prime Minister “ought to have his head punched.”

— Anthony Trollope

215. “A man who lives much at a club is apt to fall into a selfish mode of life. He is taught to think that his own comfort should always be the first object. A man can never be happy unless his first objects are outside himself. Personal self-indulgence begets a sense of meanness which sticks to a man even when he has got beyond all hope of rescue.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

217. “A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.”

— Anthony Trollope

218. “He must have known me if he had seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognize me by my face.”

— Anthony Trollope

219. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

222. “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

223. “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

224. “Sympathy may, no doubt, be conveyed by letter; but there are things on which it is almost impossible for any writer to express himself with adequate feeling; and there are things, too, which can be spoken, but which cannot be written.”

— Anthony Trollope

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “We English gentlemen hate the name of a lie, but how often do we find public men who believe each other’s words?”

— Anthony Trollope

229. “Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.”

— Anthony Trollope

230. “He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.”

— Anthony Trollope

231. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

233. “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

234. “As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.”

— Anthony Trollope

235. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

237. “In judging of them, he judged leniently; the whole bias of his profession had taught him to think that they were more sinned against than sinning, and that the animosity with which they had been pursued was venomous and unjust; but he had not the less regarded their plight as most miserable.”

— Anthony Trollope

238. “The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.”

— Anthony Trollope

239. “People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.”

— Anthony Trollope

240. “It was true, however, that he sometimes startled his hearers by things which might have been considered to border on coarseness if they had not been said by a clergyman.”

— Anthony Trollope

241. “It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

243. “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

244. “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

245. “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

246. “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

247. “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

248. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

250. “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