Anthony Trollope

“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.”

“Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.”

“Their support was not needed, therefore they were not courted.”

“He had so accustomed himself to wield the constitutional cat-of-nine-tails, that heaven will hardly be happy to him unless he be allowed to flog the cherubim.”

“You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.”

“Because we have been removing restraints on Papal aggression, while other nations have been imposing restraints. There are those at Rome who believe all England to be Romish at heart, because here in England a Roman Catholic can say what he will, and print what he will.”

“Each thought himself, especially since this last promotion, to be indispensably necessary to the formation of London society, and was comfortable in the conviction that he had thoroughly succeeded in life by acquiring the privilege of sitting down to dinner three times a week with peers and peeresses.”

“He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents.”

“He don't look the sort of fellow I like; but he's got money and he comes here, and he's good looking, — and therefore he'll be a success.”

“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?”

“The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalising the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.”

“Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin. These are the gifts we want, but we can't always get them, and have to do without them.”

“But how shall I excuse it? There are things done which are as holy as the heavens, — which are clear before God as the light of the sun, which leave no stain on the conscience, and which yet the malignity of man can invest with the very blackness of hell!”

“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.”

“Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.”

“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.”

“No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others.”

“When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer.”

“He must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise me by my face.”

“Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.”

“Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.”

“Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.”

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

“The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.”

“As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, — in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.”

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

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

“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.”

“[An attorney] can find it consistent with his dignity to turn wrong into right, and right into wrong, to abet a lie, nay to create, disseminate, and with all the play of his wit, give strength to the basest of lies, on behalf of the basest of scoundrels.”

“Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because they see a table shake and do not know how it is shaken; because they hear a rapping on a board, and cannot see the instrument that raps it; because they are touched in the dark, and do not know the hand that touches them.”

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

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

“It would seem that the full meaning of the word marriage can never be known by those who, at their first outspring into life, are surrounded by all that money can give. It requires the single sitting-room, the single fire, the necessary little efforts of self-devotion, the inward declaration that some struggle shall be made for that other one.”

“Marvellous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.”

“The affair simply amounted to this, that they were to eat their dinner uncomfortably in a field instead of comfortably in the dining room.”

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

“Is it not remarkable that the common repute which we all give to attorneys in the general is exactly opposite to that which every man gives to his own attorney in particular? Whom does anybody trust so implicitly as he trusts his own attorney? And yet is it not the case that the body of attorneys is supposed to be the most roguish body in existence?”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“To be alone with the girl to whom he is not engaged, is a man's delight; — to be alone with the man to whom she is engaged is the woman's.”

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

“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.”

“I judge a man by his actions with men, much more than by his declarations Godwards — When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness.”

“There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.”

“The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.”

“I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author's written language.”

“He could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied himself continually.”

“A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of _____; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected.”

“He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.”

“The tenth Muse who now governs the periodical press.”

“In the latter days of July in the year 185-, a most important question was for ten days hourly asked in the cathedral city of Barchester, and answered every hour in various ways — Who was to be the new Bishop?”

“There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries, than the neccessity of listening to sermons.”

“She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.”

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

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

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

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

“The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.”

“Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.”

“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."”

“There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.”

“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.”

“When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.”

“It is a remarkable thing with reference to men who are distressed for money... they never seem at a loss for small sums, or deny themselves those luxuries which small sums purchase. Cabs, dinners, wine, theatres, and new gloves are always at the command of men who are drowned in pecuniary embarrassments, whereas those who don't owe a shilling are so frequently obliged to go without them!”

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

“A man's own dinner is to himself so important that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent to every one else.”

“I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.”

“I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.”

“Heroes in books should be so much better than heroes got up for the world's common wear and tear”

“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.”

“It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.”

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

“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.”

“There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, — and always to plead it successfully.”

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

“I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston.”

“If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.”

“Speaking of New York as a traveller I have two faults to find with it. In the first place there is nothing to see; and in the second place there is no mode of getting about to see anything.”

“Every man worships the dollar, and is down before his shrine from morning to night... Other men, the world over, worship regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.”

“I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.”

“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.”

“In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.”

“Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should there have been a Small House?”

“Let her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit at forty, let her show that she is so.”

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

“It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.”

“Above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.”

“"I can never bring myself to believe it, John," said Mary Walker, the pretty daughter of Mr. George Walker, attorney, of Silverbridge.”

“She understood how much louder a cock can crow in his own farmyard than elsewhere.”

“Always remember, Mr. Robarts, that when you go into an attorney's office door, you will have to pay for it, first or last.”

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

“It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.”

“It's dogged as does it. It's not thinking about it.”

“Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.”

“It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”

“There is such a difference between life and theory.”

“She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.”

“A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.”

“Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain.”

“She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar.”

“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.”

“The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; — a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.”

“Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.”

“Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask for this and all other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“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.”

“One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.”

“I always thought there was very little wit wanted to make a fortune in the City.”

“It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.”