Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882)
One of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.
As for offending him, you might as well swear at a tree, and think to offend it.
Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome.
"I can never bring myself to believe it, John," said Mary Walker, the pretty daughter of Mr. George Walker, attorney, of Silverbridge.
You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.
A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.
She certainly had a little syllogism in her head as to the Duke ruling the borough, the Duke's wife ruling the Duke, and therefore the Duke's wife ruling the borough; but she did not think it prudent to utter this on the present occasion.
In these days, — when no palpable and immediate punishment is at hand for personal insolence from man to man, — personal insolence to one man in a company seems almost to constitute an insult to every one present.
The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.
Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.
Your nature is decimals. I run after units.
You Ministers go on shuffling the old cards till they are so worn out and dirty that one can hardly tell the pips on them.
“I should have thought any dealer would have taken him back for the sake of his character.”
“Any dealer would; but — I bought him from a gentleman.”
That girls should not marry for money we are all agreed. A lady who can sell herself for a title or an estate, for an income or a set of family diamonds, treats herself as a farmer teats his sheep and oxen — makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and a soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest state of degradation.
Of all hatreds that the world produces, a wife’s hatred for her husband, when she does hate him, is the strongest.
When two foes meet together in the same Chamber, one of whom advocates the personal government of an individual ruler, and the other that from of State, which has come to be called a Red Republic, they deal, no doubt, weighty blows of oratory at each other, but blows which never hurt at the moment. They may cut each other’s throats if they can find an opportunity; but they do not bite each other like dogs over a bone. But when opponents are almost in accord, as is always the case with our parliamentary gladiators, they are ever striving to give maddening little wounds through the joints of the harness.
“I am sorry for that, — very sorry.”
“Why so, Lord Chiltern?”
“Because if you were engaged to him I thought that perhaps you might have introduced him to ride a little less forward.”
Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.
This was Barrington Erle, a politician of long standing, who was still looked upon by many as a young man, because he had always been known as a young man, and because he had never done anything to compromise his position in that respect. He had not married, or settled himself down in a house of his own, or become subject to the gout, or given up being careful about the fitting of his clothes.
"I think it is so glorious," said the American. "There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty."
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.