Anthony Trollope

“(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.”

“Men and women ain't lumps of sugar. They don't melt because the water is sometimes warm.”

“I like to have a plan," said Mr. Palliser. "And so do I," said his wife,--"if only for the sake of not keeping it.”

“It seems to me that if a man can so train himself that he may live honestly and die fearlessly, he has done about as much as is necessary.”

“In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.”

“Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a vice.”

“There are men whose energies hardly ever carry them beyond looking for the thing they want.”

“If a cook can't make soup between two and seven, she can't make it in a week.”

“And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from the principles of story telling to which you probably have become accustomed and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, -- so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being, or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest, -- should you choose to go on with my chronicle, -- simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, -- before Mrs. Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle. You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the kind of interest of which I am speaking – and of which I intend to deprive myself, -- is not the most natural and the most efficacious. What would the ‘Black Dwarf’ be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet? – or ‘The Pirate,’ if all the truth about Norna of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefore, put the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph, -- in the next half-dozen words. Mr and Mrs Peacocke were not man and wife.”

“Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;--on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.”

“Oh, that that old man in Westmoreland would die and be gathered to his fathers, now that he was full of years and ripe for the sickle! But there was no sign of death about the old man.”

“If he was dull as a statesman he was more dull in private life, and it may be imagined that such a woman as his wife would find some difficulty in making his society the source of her happiness. Their marriage, in a point of view regarding business, had been a complete success,—and a success, too, when on the one side, that of Lady Glencora, there had been terrible dangers of shipwreck, and when on his side also there had been some little fears of a mishap.”

“And then she began to think about Lady Glencora herself. What a strange, weird nature she was,—with her round blue eyes and wavy hair, looking sometimes like a child and sometimes almost like an old woman! And how she talked! What things she said, and what terrible forebodings she uttered of stranger things that she meant to say!”

“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.”

“You shall be my pet, and my poppet, and my dearest little duck all the days of your life.”

“Mrs Draper took this as an order for her departure, and crept silently out of the room, closing the door behind her with the long protracted elaborate click which is always produced by an attempt at silence on such occasions.”

“Life is so unlike theory.”

“Of course, Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.”

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

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

“(John Bold said): If an action is the right one, personal feelings must not be allowed to interfere. Of course I greatly like Mr Harding, but that is no reason for failing in my duty to those old men.”

“He (The warden) was painfully afraid of a disagreement with any person in any subject....he felt horror at the thought of being made the subject of common gossip and public criticism.”

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

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

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

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

“He's a very handsome man, is the captain," said Jeaneatte. . ."You shouldn't think about handsome men, child," said Mrs. Greenow."And I'm sure I don't," said Jeanette. "Not more than anybody else; but if a man is handsome, ma'am, why, it stands to reason that he is handsome.”

“My dear, the truth must be spoken. I declare I don't think I ever saw a young woman so improvident as you are. When are you to begin to think about getting married if you don't do it now?""I shall never begin to think about it, till I buy my wedding clothes.”

“There are some people, if you can only get to learn the length of their feet, you can always fit them with shoes afterwards.”

“A man who desires to soften another man's heart, should always abuse himself. In softening a woman's heart, he should abuse her.”

“The end of a novel, like the end of children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum”

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

“What had passed between Eleanor Harding and Mary Bold need not be told. It is indeed a matter of thankfulness that neither the historian nor the novelist hears all that is said by their heroes or heroines, or how would three volumes or twenty suffice!”

“He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.”

“If I had a husband I should want a good one, a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man's wife.”

“I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.”

“Wine is a dangerous thing, and should not be made the exponent of truth, let the truth be good as it may; but it has the merit of forcing a man to show his true colors.”

“Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Now, Justinia, you are unfair.”

“There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one's mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken away from him in some important crisis of his life, and that his conduct should be arranged for him, either this way or that, by some divine power if it were possible, - by some patriarchal power in the absence of divinity, - or by chance, even, if nothing better than chance could be found to do it? But no one dares to cast the die, and to go honestly by the hazard. There must be the actual necessity of obeying the die, before even the die can be of any use.”

“But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.”

“The fight has been going on since...dominion in this world has found itself capable of sustentation by the exercise of fear as to the world to come.”

“I have passed the period of a woman's life when as a woman she is loved; but I have have not outlived the power of loving.”

“Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels.”

“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.”

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