559 Quotes by Anthony Trollope

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, no because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist’s first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

It is hard to conceive that the old, whose thoughts have been all thought out, should ever love to live alone. Solitude is surely for the young, who have time before them for the execution of schemes, and who can, therefore, take delight in thinking.

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

It is seldom that we know anything accurately on any subject that we have not made matter of careful study,” said Mr. Monk, “and very often do not do so even then. We are very apt to think that we men and women understand one another; but most probably you know nothing even of the modes of thought of the man who lives next door to you.

There is the review intended to sell a book, – which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him.

There was very much in the whole affair of which he would not be proud as he led his bride to the altar; – but a man does not expect to get four thousand pounds a year for nothing.

There are general laws current in the world as to morality. ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ for instance. That has “necessarily been current as a law through all nations. But the first man you meet in the street will have ideas about theft so different from yours, that, if you knew them as you know your own, you would say that this law and yours were not even founded on the same principle.

True love, true friendship, true benevolence, true tenderness, were beautiful to her, – qualities on which she could descant almost with eloquence; and therefore she was always shamming love and friendship and benevolence and tenderness.

Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?