Anthony Trollope Quotes

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

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

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.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Life is so unlike theory.

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

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.

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

But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.

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

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.

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

She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

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

I do like a little romance... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.

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

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

Beware of creating tedium!

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.

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

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.

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.

I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.

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

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