Anthony Trollope Quotes

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

Such young men are often awkward, ungainly, and not yet formed in their gait; they straggle with their limbs, and are shy; words do not come to them with ease, when words are required, among any but their accustomed associates. Social meetings are periods of penance to them, and any appearance in public will unnerve them. They go much about alone, and blush when women speak to them. In truth, they are not as yet men, whatever the number may be of their years; and, as they are no longer boys, the world has found for them the ungraceful name of hobbledehoy.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so.

Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

Life is so unlike theory.

Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.

But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.

One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

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.

Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else, will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.

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.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.

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.

Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

There was but one thing for him;- to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.

I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.

I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.

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

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.

The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.

The law is a great thing,--because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, and of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.

Beware of creating tedium!

Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.

Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.

I do like a little romance... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

Above all else, never think you're not good enough.

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.

There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

When once a woman is married she should be regarded as having thrown off her allegiance to her own sex. She is sure to be treacherous at any rate in one direction.

But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?

Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be readable.

The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.