Quotes from Anthony Trollope

Shall a woman be flayed alive because it is unfeminine in her to fight for her own skin?

We must take him as he is. He was put into the army very young, and was very young when he came into possession of his own small fortune. He might have done better; but how many young men placed in such temptations do well? As it is, he has nothing left." "I fear not." "And therefore is it not imperative that he should marry a girl with money?" "I call that stealing a girl's money, Lady Carbury.

Thieves ought to be discovered, Lizzie, — for the good of the community." "I don't care for the community. What has the community ever done for me? And now I have something else to tell you. Ever so many people came yesterday as well as that wretched policeman

Oh, papa, what will he say to you? I don't think he can eat me, my dear; nor will he dare even to murder me. I daresay he would if he could.

Distance in time and place, but especially in time, will diminish friendship. It is a rule of nature that it should be so, and thus the friendships which a man most fosters are those which he can best enjoy.

How frequent it is that men on their road to ruin feel elation such as this! A man signs away a moiety of his substance; nay, that were nothing; but a moiety of the substance of his children; he puts his pen to the paper that ruins him and them; but in doing so he frees himself from a score of immediate little pestering, stinging troubles: and, therefore, feels as though fortune has been almost kind to him.

As for money," continued the father, not caring to notice this interruption, "if it be regarded in any other light than as a shield against want, as a rampart under the protection of which you may carry on your battle, it will fail you. I was born a rich man." "Few people have cared so little about it as you," said the elder son.

The door was opened for him by an old servant in black, who proposed at once to show him to his room. He looked round the vast hall, which, when he had before known it, was ever filled with signs of life, and felt at once that it was empty and deserted. It struck him as intolerably cold, and he saw that the huge fireplace was without a spark of fire.

That feeling of over-due bills, of bills coming due, of accounts overdrawn, of tradesmen unpaid, of general money cares, is very dreadful at first; but it is astonishing how soon men get used to it.

I have walked, my lord, and am warm. I never walk,—never could walk. I don't know why it is, but my legs won't walk. Perhaps you never tried. Yes, I have.

I doubt whether an old man should ever live in England if he can help it.

But a Prime Minister cannot escape till he has succeeded in finding a successor; and though the successor be found and consents to make an attempt, the old unfortunate cannot be allowed to go free when that attempt is shown to be a failure. He has not absolutely given up the keys of his boxes, and no one will take them from him. Even a sovereign can abdicate; but the Prime Minister of a constitutional government is in bonds.

If he should wish it, she would make no difficulty of parting with the things around her. Of what concern were the prettinesses of life to one whose inner soul was hampered with such ugliness?

I quite feel that an apology is due for beginning a novel with two long dull chapters full of description.

Though you add carriage to carriage, you will not be carried more comfortably.

But, like some other undiplomatic ambassadors, in her desire to be civil, she ran at once to the extremity of the permitted concessions.

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

But girls are sly, especially when their lovers are concerned.

CHAPTER LXXVI THE WEDDING

Of whom did the party consist? — Of honest, chivalrous, and enthusiastic men, but mainly of men who were idle, and unable to take upon their own shoulders the responsibility of real work. Their leaders had been selected from the outside, — clever, eager, pushing men, but of late had been hardly selected from among themselves.

In poetry, she was familiar with names as late as Dryden, and had once been seduced into reading "The Rape of the Lock;

Faint heart never won fair lady.

It is a very sad thing for any human being to have to say to himself, — with an earnest belief in his own assertion, — that all the joy of this world is over for him; and is the sadder because such conviction is apt to exclude the hope of other joy.

He had gone to parties for a year or two, and during those years had essayed the life of a young man about town, frequenting theatres and billiard-rooms, and doing a few things which he should have left undone, and leaving undone a few things which should not have been so left.