Quotes from Anthony Trollope

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 was but one thing for him;- to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

Did you ever know a poor man made better by law or a lawyer!' said Bunce bitterly.

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

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

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

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.

Gentlemen lacking substantial sympathy with their leader found it to be comfortable to deceive themselves, and raise their hearts at the same time by the easy enthusiasm of noise.

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

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

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.

Little bits of things make me do it; — perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; — the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver.

How am I to tell you what he said? He talked nonsense about my beauty, as all the men do. If a woman were hump-backed, and had only one eye, they wouldn't be ashamed to tell her she was a Venus.

Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future,—never reached but always coming. 

She had no startling brilliancy of beauty, no pearly whiteness, no radiant carnation. She had not the majestic contour that rivets attention, demands instant wonder, and then disappoints by the coldness of its charms. You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart.

Miss Proudie was not quite so civil. Had Mr. Robarts been still unmarried, she also could have smiled sweetly; but she had been exercising smiles on clergymen too long to waste them now on a married parish parson.

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.

When a man gets into his head an idea that the public voice calls for him, it is astonishing how great becomes his trust in the wisdom of the public.

A woman's weapon is her tongue.

Who would ever think of learning to live out of an English novel?

Conduct! Is conduct everything? One may conduct oneself excellently, and yet break one's heart.

every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter.

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

The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.