Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “I have all the world to choose from, but no reason whatever for a choice.”

— Anthony Trollope

303. “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

304. “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

305. “This kind of consolation from the world’s deceit is very common. Mothers obtain it from their children, and men from their dogs. Some men even do so from their walking-sticks, which is just as rational. How is it that we can take joy to ourselves in that we are not deceived by those who have not attained the art to deceive us?”

— Anthony Trollope

306. “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

307. “It is no good any longer to have any opinion upon anything.”

— Anthony Trollope

308. “We must not be philosophical before her. Mamma, Major Grantly has – skedaddled.”

— Anthony Trollope

309. “Perhaps also Roger felt that were he to take up the cudgels for an argument he might be worsted in the combat, as in such combats success is won by practised skill rather than by truth.”

— Anthony Trollope

310. “Dr. Tempest was well known among his parishioners to be hard and unsympathetic, some said unfeeling also, and cruel; but it was admitted by those who disliked him the most that he was both practical and just, and that he cared for the welfare of many, though he was rarely touched by the misery of one.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

319. “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

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

— 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. “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

323. “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

324. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

326. “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

327. “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

328. “Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.”

— Anthony Trollope

329. “But she knew this, – that it was necessary for her happiness that she should devote herself to some one. All the elegancies and outward charms of life were delightful, if only they could be used as the means to some end. As an end themselves they were nothing.”

— Anthony Trollope

330. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

332. “But the strength of the minority consisted, not in the fact that the majority against them was small, but that it was decreasing. How quickly does the snowball grow into hugeness as it is rolled on, – but when the change comes in the weather how quickly does it melt, and before it is gone become a thing ugly, weak, and formless!”

— Anthony Trollope

333. “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

334. “There are certain phases of mind in which a man can neither ride nor shoot, nor play a stroke at billiards, nor remember a card at whist, – and to such a phase of mind had come both Crosbie and Dale after their conversation over the gate.”

— Anthony Trollope

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

338. “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

339. “Rest and quiet are the comforts of those who have been content to remain in obscurity.”

— Anthony Trollope

340. “Nevertheless, it is not an uncommon thing to hear openly at the clubs an account of what has been settled; and, as we all know, not a council is held as to which the editor of The People’s Banner does not inform its readers next day exactly what took place.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

342. “Lady – very slowly, and with a voice perhaps hardly articulate, carrying on, at the same time, her engineering works on a wider scale. “Well, I don’t exactly want to leave you.” And so the matter was settled: settled with much propriety and satisfaction; and both the lady and gentleman would have thought, had they ever thought about the matter at all, that this, the sweetest moment of their lives, had been graced by all the poetry by which such moments ought to be hallowed.”

— Anthony Trollope

343. “Gentlemen lacking substantial sympathy with their leader found it to be comfortable to deceive themselves, and raise their hearts at the same time by the easy enthusiasm of noise.”

— Anthony Trollope

344. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

346. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

348. “One doesn’t have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.”

— Anthony Trollope

349. “There is so much in a turn of the eye and in the tone given to a word when such things have to be said, – so much more of importance than in the words themselves.”

— Anthony Trollope

350. “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