Top 400 Anthony Trollope Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.”

— Anthony Trollope

352. “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

353. “People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.”

— Anthony Trollope

354. “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

355. “It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

357. “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

358. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

361. “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

362. “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

363. “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

364. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

366. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

368. “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

369. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

371. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

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

— Anthony Trollope

374. “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

375. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

377. “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

378. “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

379. “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

380. “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

381. “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

382. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

384. “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

385. “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

386. “She probably cared but little for either of them. She was one of those women to whom it is not given by nature to care very much for anybody. But, of the two, she certainly cared the most for Mr. Dobbs Broughton, – because Mr. Dobbs Broughton belonged to her.”

— Anthony Trollope

387. “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

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

— Anthony Trollope

389. “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

390. “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

391. “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

392. “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

393. “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

394. “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

395. “But Johnny hasn’t got twelve children, Tom.” “One doesn’t have a cousin in trouble every day,” said Toogood. “And then you see there’s something very pretty in the case. It’s quite a pleasure getting it up.”

— Anthony Trollope

396. “She had been notably religious, but that was gradually wearing off as she advanced in years. The rigid strictness of Sabbatarian practice requires the full energy of middle life.”

— Anthony Trollope

397. “When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer.”

— Anthony Trollope

398. “Of one small circumstance that had occurred, he felt quite sure that Mr. Kennedy knew nothing.”

— Anthony Trollope

399. “Speaking of New York as a traveller I have two faults to find with it. In the first place there is nothing to see; and in the second place there is no mode of getting about to see anything.”

— Anthony Trollope

400. “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