Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.”

— Anthony Trollope

352. “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

353. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

355. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

357. “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

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

361. “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

362. “If it comes to be a question of soul-saving, Mr. Bunce, I shan’t save my place at the expense of my conscience.” “Not if you knows it, you mean. But the worst of it is that a man gets so thick into the mud that he don’t know whether he’s dirty or clean. You’ll have to wote as you’re told, and of course you’ll think it’s right enough. Ain’t you been among Parliament gents long enough to know that that’s the way it goes?”

— Anthony Trollope

363. “But yet his thoughts were very tender to her. Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless. We want what we have not; and especially that which we can never have.”

— Anthony Trollope

364. “There’s nothing like going on with a thing.”

— Anthony Trollope

365. “But then the pastors and men of God can only be human, – cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.”

— Anthony Trollope

366. “I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.”

— Anthony Trollope

367. “Men very skilful in unravelling such mysteries were sent to Paris, and the police of that capital entered upon the search with most praiseworthy zeal. But the number of life-preservers which had been sold altogether baffled them. It seemed that nothing was so common as that gentlemen should walk about with bludgeons in their pockets covered with leathern thongs.”

— Anthony Trollope

368. “Of course he had committed forgery; – of course he had committed robbery. That, indeed, was nothing, for he had been cheating and forging and stealing all his life.”

— Anthony Trollope

369. “Heroes in books should be so much better than heroes got up for the world’s common wear and tear.”

— Anthony Trollope

370. “But these extravagances were due perhaps to whisky-and-water, and that kind of intoxication which comes to certain men from momentary triumphs. Tifto could always be got to make a fool of himself when surrounded by three or four men of rank who, for the occasion, would talk to him as an equal.”

— Anthony Trollope

371. “There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, and always to plead it successfully.”

— Anthony Trollope

372. “They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.”

— Anthony Trollope

373. “How happy could he be if it were only possible for him to go away, and become even a curate in a parish, without his wife! Would there ever come to him a time of freedom? Would she ever die? He was older than she, and of course he would die first. Would it not be a fine thing if he could die at once, and thus escape from his misery?”

— Anthony Trollope

374. “Had he yielded to the claim, the attack would have been as venomous, and very probably would have come from the same quarter.”

— Anthony Trollope

375. “Of course, Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.”

— Anthony Trollope

376. “The best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you.”

— Anthony Trollope

377. “I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

379. “I don’t know much about ladies’ judgements,” said the old man. “It does seem to me that when a lady makes a promise she ought to keep it.” “According to that,” said Kate, “if I were engaged to a man, and found that he was a murderer, I still ought to marry him.”

— Anthony Trollope

380. “It is admitted that a novel can hardly be made interesting or successful without love? It is necessary because the passion is one which interests or has interested all. Everyone feels it, has felt it, or expects to feel it.”

— Anthony Trollope

381. “Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.”

— Anthony Trollope

382. “The idea of putting old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members of Parliament generally.”

— Anthony Trollope

383. “Blessed are the peace-makers,’ miss, ’for they shall be called the children of God.”

— Anthony Trollope

384. “When men think much, they can rarely decide.”

— Anthony Trollope

385. “Miss Proudie was not quite so civil. Had Mr. Robarts been still unmarried, she also could have smiled sweetly; but she had been exercising smiles on clergymen too long to waste them now on a married parish parson.”

— Anthony Trollope

386. “Do they sit altogether mostly all the morning?” “I fancy they do.” “I suppose there’s some way of dividing them. They tell me you know all about women. If you want to get one to yourself, how do you manage it?”

— Anthony Trollope

387. “It is not what one suffers that kills one, but what one knows that other people see that one suffers.”

— Anthony Trollope

388. “No doubt arrogance will produce submission; and there are men who take other men at the price those other men put upon themselves.”

— Anthony Trollope

389. “Men and not measures are, no doubt, the very life of politics. But then it is not the fashion to say so in public places.”

— Anthony Trollope

390. “In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.”

— Anthony Trollope

391. “No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise man.”

— Anthony Trollope

392. “Though Mr. Crawley was now but a broken reed, and was beneath his feet, yet Mr. Thumble acknowledged to himself that he could not hold his own in debate with this broken reed.”

— Anthony Trollope

393. “We can generally read a man’s purpose towards us in his manner, if his purposes are of much moment to us.”

— Anthony Trollope

394. “She had seen no one who had so touched her. But she was alive to the romance of the thing, and was in love with the idea of being in love.”

— Anthony Trollope

395. “It is good to be beautiful, but it should come of God and not of the hairdresser. And personal dignity is a great possession; but a man should struggle for it no more than he would for beauty.”

— Anthony Trollope

396. “He possessed the tact of becoming instantly intimate with women without giving rise to any fear of impertinence. He had about him somewhat of the propensities of a tame cat. It seemed quite natural that he should be petted, caressed, and treated with familiar good nature, and that in return he should purr, and be sleek and graceful, and above all never show his claws. Like other tame cats, however, he had his claws, and sometimes made them dangerous.”

— Anthony Trollope

397. “To feel that your hours are filled to overflowing, that you can barely steal minutes enough for sleep, that the welfare of many is entrusted to you, that the world looks on and approves, that some good is always being done to others – above all things some good to your country; – that is happiness.”

— Anthony Trollope

398. “As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.”

— Anthony Trollope

399. “She was an old woman who thought all evil of those she did not know, and all good of those whom she did know...”

— Anthony Trollope

400. “And she took in Lizzie Greystock, whom she hated almost as much as she did sermons, because the admiral’s wife had been her sister, and she recognised a duty. But, having thus bound herself to Lizzie, – who was a beauty, – of course it became the first object of her life to get rid of Lizzie by a marriage.”

— Anthony Trollope