Anthony Trollope's Quotes

Wine is valued by its price, not its flavour.

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.

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.

I do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Marvelous 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.

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.

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

A man's mind will very gradually refuse to make itself up until it is driven and compelled by emergency.

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

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

Life is so unlike theory.

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

The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.

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.

A fellow oughtn't to let his family property go to pieces.

A husband is very much like a house or a horse.

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

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

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

High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

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.