Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 5 of 9

201. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

205. “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

206. “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

207. “I cannot hold with those who want to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.”

— Anthony Trollope

208. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

210. “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

211. “Never mingle love and business.”

— Anthony Trollope

212. “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

213. “For there is no folly so great as keeping one’s sorrows hidden.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

215. “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

216. “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

217. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

220. “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

221. “Gentle reader, did you ever feel yourself snubbed? Did you ever, when thinking much of your own importance, find yourself suddenly reduced to a nonentity? Such was Eleanor’s feeling now.”

— Anthony Trollope

222. “Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?”

— Anthony Trollope

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

230. “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

231. “Both Lizzieites and anti-Lizzieites were disposed to think that Lizzie was very clever.”

— Anthony Trollope

232. “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

233. “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

234. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

236. “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

237. “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

238. “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

239. “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

240. “A woman’s life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man’s life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.”

— Anthony Trollope

241. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

243. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

246. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

248. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

250. “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