Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “We must not be philosophical before her. Mamma, Major Grantly has – skedaddled.”

— Anthony Trollope

302. “I do not think myself to be a worm, and a grub, grass of the field fit only to be burned, a clod, a morsel of putrid atoms that should be thrown to the dungheap, ready for the nethermost pit. Nor if I did should I therefore expect to sit with Angels and Archangels.”

— Anthony Trollope

303. “Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.”

— Anthony Trollope

304. “An editor is bound to avoid the meshes of the law, which are always infinitely more costly to companies, or things, or institutions, than they are to individuals.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

306. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

308. “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

309. “Upon the present occasion London was full of clergymen. The specially clerical clubs, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Old University, and the Athenaeum, were black with them.”

— Anthony Trollope

310. “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

311. “His feelings towards his friends were, that while they stuck to him he would stick to them; that he would work with them shoulder to shoulder; that he would be faithful to the faithful. He knew nothing of the beautiful love which can be true to a false friend.”

— Anthony Trollope

312. “Credit is a matter so subtle in its essence, that, as it may be obtained almost without reason, so, without reason, may it be made to melt away.”

— Anthony Trollope

313. “It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

316. “I think I owe my life to cork soles.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

318. “The party to which he belonged had, as he knew, endeavoured to avoid the subject of the disendowment of the Church of England. 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

319. “But he never hears of anything. If two men fought a duel in his own dining-room he would be the last man in London to know it.”

— Anthony Trollope

320. “There had been with him such periods of misery, during which he had wailed inwardly and had confessed to himself that the wife of his bosom was too much for him. Now the storm seemed to be coming very roughly. It would be demanded of him that he should exercise certain episcopal authority which he knew did not belong to him. Now, episcopal authority admits of being stretched or contracted according to the character of the bishop who uses it.”

— Anthony Trollope

321. “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

322. “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

323. “When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

325. “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

326. “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

327. “The rising in life of our familiar friends is, perhaps, the bitterest morsel of the bitter bread which we are called upon to eat in life.”

— Anthony Trollope

328. “And I think that when once he had learned the art of arranging his words as he stood upon his legs, and had so mastered his voice as to have obtained the ear of the House, the work of his life was not difficult.”

— Anthony Trollope

329. “A man will be generally very old and feeble before he forgets how much money he has in the funds.”

— Anthony Trollope

330. “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

331. “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

332. “Leave a chimney-sweep alone when you see him, Chiltern. Should he run against you, then remember that it is one of the necessary penalties of clean linen that it is apt to be soiled.”

— Anthony Trollope

333. “There was very much in the whole affair of which he would not be proud as he led his bride to the altar; – but a man does not expect to get four thousand pounds a year for nothing.”

— Anthony Trollope

334. “A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.”

— Anthony Trollope

335. “It is, however, no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. Men, full fledged and at their work, are, for the most part, too busy for much thought; but lads, on whom the work of the world has not yet fallen with all its pressure, – they have time for thinking.”

— Anthony Trollope

336. “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

337. “A man desires to win a virgin heart, and is happy to know, – or at least to believe, -that he has won it. With a woman every former rival is an added victim to the wheels of the triumphant chariot in which she is sitting.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

339. “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

340. “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

341. “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

342. “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

343. “As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil.”

— Anthony Trollope

344. “What is there that money will not do?”

— Anthony Trollope

345. “Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.”

— Anthony Trollope

346. “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

347. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

349. “Passionate love, I take it, rarely lasts long, and is very troublesome while it does last. Mutual esteem is very much more valuable.”

— Anthony Trollope

350. “The natural man will probably be manly. The affected man cannot be so.”

— Anthony Trollope