Anthony Trollope Quotes

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

“Of all needs a book has, the chief need is to be readable.”

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

“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment 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.”

“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.”

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

“Few men do understand the nature of a woman’s heart till years have robbed such understanding of its value.”

“If a husband be not master of his wife´s heart, he has no right to her fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true.”

“Morning parties, as a rule, are failures. People never know how to get away from them gracefully.”

“Never mind love. After all, what is it? The dream of a few weeks. That is all its joy. The disappointment of a life is its Nemesis.”

“No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented.”

“Some men have a great gift of making money, but they can't spend it. Others can't put two shillings together, but they have a great talent for all sorts of outlay. I begin to think that my genius is wholly in the latter line.”

“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.”

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

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

“Ah, you think that anything naked must be indecent; even truth.”

“But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it? Who at least ever declined a love secret? What sister could do so?”

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

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

“There is no cholera, no yellow-fever, no small-pox more contagious than debt.”

“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 young man without an income cannot be accepted as a fitting suitor for a gentleman’s daughter.”

“Courtesty and cordiality are not only not the same, but they are incompatible. Why so? Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free.”

“Familiarity does breed contempt;—doesn’t it?”

“Idleness is the root of all evil.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.”