Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The truth is so much more real when it comes from things that are near.”

— Anthony Trollope

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

256. “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

257. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

259. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

261. “There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.”

— Anthony Trollope

262. “Little bits of things make me do it; – perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; – the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver.”

— Anthony Trollope

263. “The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.”

— Anthony Trollope

264. “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

265. “No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others.”

— Anthony Trollope

266. “Servants are wonderful actors, looking often as though they knew nothing when they know everything, – as though they understood nothing, when they understand all.”

— Anthony Trollope

267. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

269. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

271. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

273. “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

274. “I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything.”

— Anthony Trollope

275. “He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.”

— Anthony Trollope

276. “I ain’t a bit ashamed of anything.”

— Anthony Trollope

277. “Frank and Mary had been so much together in his holidays, had so constantly consorted together as boys and girls, that, as regarded her, he had not that innate fear of a woman which represses a young man’s tongue; and she was so used to his good-humour, his fun, and high jovial spirits, and was, withal, so fond of them and him, that it was very difficult for her to mark with accurate feeling, and stop with reserved brow, the shade of change from a boy’s liking to a man’s love.”

— Anthony Trollope

278. “There are some points on which no man can be contented to follow the advice of another – some subjects on which a man can consult his own conscience only.”

— Anthony Trollope

279. “When the little dog snarls, the big dog does not connect the snarl with himself, simply fancying that the little dog must be uncomfortable.”

— Anthony Trollope

280. “Dr Grantly would be ready enough to take up his cudgel against all comers on behalf of the church militant, but he would do so on the distasteful ground of the church’s infallibility. Such a contest would give no comfort to Mr Harding’s doubts. He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.”

— Anthony Trollope

281. “Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable.”

— Anthony Trollope

282. “It is said by many who have had to deal with boys, that certain among them claim and obtain ascendancy by the spirit within them; but I doubt whether the ascendancy is not rather thrust on them than claimed by them. Here again I think the outward gait of the boy goes far towards obtaining for him the submission of his fellows.”

— Anthony Trollope

283. “That fighting of a battle without belief is, I think, the sorriest task which ever falls to the lot of any man.”

— Anthony Trollope

284. “Men will love to the last, but they love what is fresh and new. A woman’s love can live on the recollection of the past, and cling to what is old and ugly.”

— Anthony Trollope

285. “A man’s own dinner is to himself so important that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent to anyone else.”

— Anthony Trollope

286. “It was ludicrous and almost painful to see Mr Palliser wandering about and counting the boxes, as though he could do any good by that. At this special crisis of his life he hated his papers and figures and statistics, and could not apply himself to them. He, whose application had been so unremitting, could apply himself now to nothing. His world had been brought to an abrupt end, and he was awkward at making a new beginning. I believe that they all three were reading novels before one o’clock.”

— Anthony Trollope

287. “A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.”

— Anthony Trollope

288. “A man can’t do what he likes with his coverts.”

— Anthony Trollope

289. “With the rich, experience has already taught him that a different line of action is necessary. Men in the upper walks of life do not mind being cursed, and the women, presuming that it be done in delicate phrase, rather like it.”

— Anthony Trollope

290. “Of course there was.” “Of course there was. And Eugene Aram, when he murdered a man in Bulwer’s novel, turned the matter over in his mind before he did it?”

— Anthony Trollope

291. “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

292. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

295. “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

296. “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

297. “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

298. “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

299. “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

300. “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