Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “He had never done any good, but he had always carried himself like a duke, and like a duke he carried himself to the end.”

— Anthony Trollope

252. “There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

254. “But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.”

— Anthony Trollope

255. “My dear, the least said the soonest mended,” said Mrs. French.”

— Anthony Trollope

256. “Oh! do look at Miss Oriel’s bonnet the next time you see her. I cannot understand why it should be so, but I am sure of this – no English fingers could put together such a bonnet as that; and I am nearly sure that no French fingers could do it in England.”

— Anthony Trollope

257. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

259. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

263. “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

264. “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

265. “What had passed between Eleanor Harding and Mary Bold need not be told. It is indeed a matter of thankfulness that neither the historian nor the novelist hears all that is said by their heroes or heroines, or how would three volumes or twenty suffice!”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

267. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

269. “They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man, – of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one, – will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber.”

— Anthony Trollope

270. “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

271. “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

272. “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

273. “Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.”

— Anthony Trollope

274. “The mind of the thinker and the student is driven to admit, though it be awe-struck by apparent injustice, that this inequality is the work of God. Make all men equal to-day, and God has so created them that they shall be all unequal to-morrow.”

— Anthony Trollope

275. “There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been.”

— Anthony Trollope

276. “I don’t care twopence who have their way,” said Lucinda, “I mean to have mine; – that’s all.”

— Anthony Trollope

277. “A man’s love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.”

— Anthony Trollope

278. “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

279. “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

280. “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

281. “On those days Lucinda kept as much as she could out of Sir Griffin’s way, and almost snapped at the baronet when he spoke to her. Sir Griffin swore to himself that he wasn’t going to be treated that way. He’d have her, by George! There are men in whose love a good deal of hatred is mixed; – who love as the huntsman loves the fox, towards the killing of which he intends to use all his energies and intellects.”

— Anthony Trollope

282. “And then he painted to himself a not untrue picture of the probable miseries of a man who begins life too high up on the ladder, – who succeeds in mounting before he has learned how to hold on when he is aloft.”

— Anthony Trollope

283. “A man who desires to soften another man’s heart, should always abuse himself. In softening a woman’s heart, he should abuse her.”

— Anthony Trollope

284. “We all profess to believe when we’re told that this world should be used merely as a preparation for the next; and yet there is something so cold and comfortless in the theory that we do not relish the prospect even for our children.”

— Anthony Trollope

285. “In former days the Earl had been a man quite capable of making himself disagreeable, and probably had not yet lost the power of doing so. Of all our capabilities this is the one which clings longest to us.”

— Anthony Trollope

286. “Who is there that abstains from reading that which is printed in abuse of himself?”

— Anthony Trollope

287. “As a general rule, it is highly desirable that ladies should keep their temper: a woman when she storms always makes herself ugly, and usually ridiculous also. There is nothing so odious to man as a virago. Though Theseus loved an Amazon, he showed his love but roughly, and from the time of Theseus downward, no man ever wished to have his wife remarkable rather for forward prowess than retiring gentleness. A low voice “is an excellent thing in woman.”

— Anthony Trollope

288. “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

289. “No; – I do not think that. But her temper is so ungovernable, and she has, if I may say so, been so spoilt among you here, – I mean by the girls, of course, – that she does not know how to restrain herself.”

— Anthony Trollope

290. “These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad, indeed, for they want the reality of sadness; but quite as perplexing, and generally less satisfactory.”

— Anthony Trollope

291. “But the school in which good training is most practiced will, as a rule, turn out the best scholars.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

293. “I have passed the period of a woman’s life when as a woman she is loved; but I have have not outlived the power of loving.”

— Anthony Trollope

294. “But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.”

— Anthony Trollope

295. “Then in this country a man is to be punished or not, according to his ability to fee a lawyer!”

— Anthony Trollope

296. “I would carry you home, Mary, if it would do you a service,” said Frank, with considerable pathos in his voice. “Oh, dear me! pray do not, Mr Gresham. I should not like it at all,” said she: “a wheelbarrow would be preferable to that.”

— Anthony Trollope

297. “He was very great,” said Ratler to Bonteen. “Did you not think so?” “Yes, I did, – very powerful indeed. But the party is broken up to atoms.” “Atoms soon come together again in politics,” said Ratler. “They can’t do without him. They haven’t got anybody else. I wonder what he did when he got home.”

— Anthony Trollope

298. “When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.”

— Anthony Trollope

299. “When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.”

— Anthony Trollope

300. “It might have been seen, I said, with half an eye, that Mr. Broughton did not like the state of the money-market; and it might also be seen with the other half that he had been endeavouring to mitigate the bitterness of his dislike by alcoholic aid. Musselboro at once perceived that his patron and partner was half drunk, and Crosbie was aware that he had been drinking.”

— Anthony Trollope