Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882)
One of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.
“Why should he do it at all?” asked Phineas.
“That’s what everybody asks, but the answer seems to be so plain! Because he can do it, and we can’t.”
There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.
An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.
There are worse things than a lie... I have found... that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.
“Isn‘t there some trouble about money?”
“They wouldn‘t be very rich, Duchess.”
“What a blessing for them! But then, perhaps, they‘d be very poor.”
“They would be rather poor.”
“Which is not a blessing.”
Making love to a sweet, soft, blushing, willing, though silent girl is a pleasant employment; but the task of declaring love to a stony-hearted, obdurate, ill-conditions Diana is very disagreeable for any gentleman. And it is the more so when the gentleman really loves, — or thinks that he loves, — his Diana.
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.
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.
No doubt he had acted in direct opposition to the spirit of the injunction, but legal orders are read by the letter, and not by the spirit.
It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies — who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two — that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself.
It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.
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.
Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant.
Men when they are true are simple. They are often false has hell, and then they are crafty as Lucifer. But the man who is true judges others by himself, — almost without reflection. A woman can be true as steel and cunning at the same time.
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.
A man destined to sit conspicuously on our Treasury Bench, or on the seat opposite to it, should ask the gods for a thick skin as a first gift. The need of this in our national assembly is greater than elsewhere, because the differences between men opposed to each other are smaller.
One of her instructors in fashion had given her to understand that curls were not the thing. "They'll always pass muster," Miss Dunstable had replied, "when they are done up with bank notes."