Anthony Trollope Quotes

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

Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.

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 aset of family diamonds, treats herself as a farmer treats his sheep and oxen--makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest state of degradation.

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left--something dim and inaccurate--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.

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

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

Beware of creating tedium!

This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

If we wish ourselves to be high, we should treat that which is over us as high.

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.

To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.

There is always a piano in an hotel drawing-room, on which, of course, some one of the forlorn ladies is generally employed. I do not suppose that these pianos are, in fact, as a rule, louder and harsher, more violent and less musical, than other instruments of the kind. They seem to be so, but that, I take it, arises from the exceptional mental depression of those who have to listen to them.

I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.

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

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

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.

Life is so unlike theory.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

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

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

Nothing surely is as potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small dainty task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

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.

But she knew this,—that it was necessary for her happiness that she should devote herself to some one. All the elegancies and outward charms of life were delightful, if only they could be used as the means to some end. As an end themselves they were nothing.

Wine is valued for its price, not its flavor.

A farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go. Never throws out curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master he is never showy. He does not paw and prance, and arch his neck, and bid the world admire his beauties...and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.

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.

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

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

He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

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.

Fortune favors the brave; and the world certainly gives the most credit to those who are able to give an unlimited credit to themselves.

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

Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable.

A man can't do what he likes with his coverts.

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.

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

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