Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882)
One of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.
But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.
The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.
Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that is comes early.
"I am ready to obey as a child; — but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason."
It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story "The Great Orley Farm Case." But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore, — Orley Farm.
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.
But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?
Needless to deny that the normal London plumber is a dishonest man. We do not even allow ourselves to think so. That question, as to the dishonesty of mankind generally, is one that disturbs us greatly; — whether a man in all grades of life will by degrees train his honesty to suit his own book, so that the course of life which he shall bring himself to regard as soundly honest shall, if known to his neighbours, subject him to their reproof. We own to a doubt whether the honesty of a bishop would shine bright as the morning star to the submissive ladies who now worship him, if the theory of life upon which he lives were understood by them in all its bearings.
Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the United States.
Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should there have been a Small House?
A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.
Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.
There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.
Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.
Flirting I take to be the excitement of love, without its reality, and without its ordinary result in marriage.
A small task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.
There would be a blaze and a confusion, in which timid men would doubt whether the constitution would be burned to tinder or only illuminated; but that blaze and that confusion would be dear to Mr. Daubney if he could stand as the centre figure, — the great pyrotechnist who did it all, red from head to foot with the glare of the squibs with which his own hands were filling all the spaces.
You men find so many angels in your travels. You have been honester than some. You have generally been off with the old angel before you were with the new, — as far at least as I knew.
The town horse, used to gaudy trappings, no doubt despises the work of his country brother; but yet, now and again, there comes upon him a sudden desire to plough.
Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?