Anthony trollope quotes

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.

When men think much, they can rarely decide.

We cannot bring ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any respect be wiser than ourselves. If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.

I run great risk of failing. It may be that I shall encounter ruin where I look for reputation and a career of honor. The chances are perhaps more in favour of ruin than of success. But, whatever may be the chances, I shall go on as long as any means of carrying on the fight are at my disposal.

There is such a difference between life and theory.

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.

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

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 secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.

What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.

For there is no folly so great as keeping one's sorrows hidden.

With many women I doubt whether there be any more effectual wayof touching their hearts than ill-using them and then confessing it. If you wish to get the sweetest fragrance from the herb at your feet, tread on it and bruise it.

People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know better.

Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man's honesty thanthat?of knowing himselftobe quiteloved by a girl whom he almost loves himself.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it.

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

Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

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

A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.

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.

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

The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.

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

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

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

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.

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

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

Of all hatreds that the world produces, a wife's hatred for her husband, when she does hate him, is the strongest.

The happiest man is he, who being above the troubles which money brings, has his hands the fullest of work.

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.

The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.

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.

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

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?

What is there that money will not do?

After money in the bank, a grudge is the next best thing.

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

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

What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife?

Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.

When the little dog snarls, the big dog does not connect the snarl with himself, simply fancying that the little dog must be uncomfortable.

I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he'll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.

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

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

To feel that your hours are filled to overflowing, that you can barely steal minutes enough for sleep, that the welfare of many is entrusted to you, that the world looks on and approves, that some good is always being done to others -- above all things some good to your country; -- that is happiness.

I hate a stupid man who can't talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don’t like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect. I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth and all that kind of thing. . . A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room. But a man who can't show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout.

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.

I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described.

When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness.

Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat the women in numbers by ten to one, and through they certainly speak the louder, the concrete sound that meets the ears of any outside listener is always a sound of women's voices?

It may, indeed, be assumed that a man who loses his temper while he is speaking is endeavouring to speak the truth such as he believes it to be, and again it may be assumed that a man who speaks constantly without losing his temper is not always entitled to the same implicit faith.

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.

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.

It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing

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 anyone else.

Life is so unlike theory.

An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.

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

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.

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.

It's dogged as does it. It ain't thinking about it.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.

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

I am ready to obey as a child; :;but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason.

But mad people never die. That's a well-known fact. They've nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.

Those who offend us are generally punished for the offence they give; but we so frequently miss the satisfaction of knowing that we are avenged !.

Beware of creating tedium!

It is no good any longer having any opinion upon anything.

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

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

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

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

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.

Audacity in wooing is a great virtue, but a man must measure even his virtues.

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

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

A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn't win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I ain't a bit ashamed of anything.

We all profess to believe when we're told that this world should be used merely as a preparation for the next; and yet there is something so cold and comfortless in the theory that we do not relish the prospect even for our children.

When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.

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

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 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.

If a cook can't make soup between two and seven, she can't make it in a week.

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

Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant.

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.

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

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.

Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome.

Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.

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

Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.

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

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

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

The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician's life.

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

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

I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.