Quotes from Anthony Trollope

But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me—my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,—as a bewildered idiot.

We used," he said, "to endeavour to get someone to represent us in Parliament, who would agree with us on vital subjects, such as the Church of England and the necessity of religion. Now it seems to be considered ill-mannered to make any allusion to such subjects!

Lodgings in London are always gloomy. Gloomy colours wear better than bright ones for curtains and carpets, and the keepers of lodgings in London seem to think that a certain dinginess of appearance is respectable. I never saw a London lodging in which any attempt at cheerfulness had been made, and I do not think that any such attempt, if made, would pay.

When he entered the drawing-room she was sitting alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and rounded at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoke three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her.

traitor to that feminine faith against which treason on the part of one woman is always unpardonable in the eyes of other women. But her treason would have been of a deeper die had she sent the latter portion

Marry Oswald, and be your own mistress." "I mean to be my own mistress without marrying Oswald, though I don't see my way quite clearly as yet. I think I shall set up a little house of my own, and let the world say what it pleases. I suppose they couldn't make me out to be a lunatic.

He has gone, Mamma,' she said, as she entered the breakfast-room. 'And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways. It has been all Sunday for me the last six weeks.

What!" said his sensible enemies, "is Johnny not to be taught to read because he does not like it?" "Johnny must read by all means," would the doctor answer; "but is it necessary that he should not like it? If the preceptor have it in him, may not Johnny learn, not only to read, but to like to learn to read?

Fighting! There's no fighting wanted, as you know well enough. Men don't fight nowadays.

Whenever the circulation of such a paper begins to slacken, the proprietors should, as a matter of course, admonish their Alf to add a little power to the crushing department.

Of one small circumstance that had occurred, he felt quite sure that Mr. Kennedy knew nothing.

How odd that is! 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.

No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise man.

But the strength of the minority consisted, not in the fact that the majority against them was small, but that it was decreasing. How quickly does the snowball grow into hugeness as it is rolled on, — but when the change comes in the weather how quickly does it melt, and before it is gone become a thing ugly, weak, and formless!

They thought that they loved each other: — each thought so; but there was no love, no sympathy, no warmth. The very atmosphere was cold, — so cold that no fire could remove the chill.

As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil.

Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man,—of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one,—will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber.

But 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.

Solve senescentem.

She was an old woman who thought all evil of those she did not know, and all good of those whom she did know....

There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.

He, as he told his tale, did not look her in the face, but sat with his eyes fixed upon her muff.

No doubt arrogance will produce submission; and there are men who take other men at the price those other men put upon themselves.