Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882)
One of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.
Some few sublime and hot-headed gentleman muttered the word “impeachment.” Others, who were more practical and less dignified, suggested that the Prime Minister “ought to have his head punched.”
“They have been saying ever so long that the old Duke of Omnium means to marry her on his deathbed, but I don’t suppose there can be anything in it.”
“Why should he put it off for so very inopportune an occasion?” asked Phineas.
As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.
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.
He had married, let us say for love; — probably very much by chance.
Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician’s life.
People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know better.
In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours, — and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome.
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.