Quotes By Anthony Trollope

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

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

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.

A woman's life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man's life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.

My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.

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.

Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.

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.

Life is so unlike theory.

And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.

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.

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.

I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything.

I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.

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.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

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

I ain't a bit ashamed of anything.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

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

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.

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

What is there that money will not do?

Cham is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

Passionate love, I take it, rarely lasts long, and is very troublesome while it does last. Mutual esteem is very much more valuable.

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.

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

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.