559 Quotes by Anthony Trollope

We used,” he said, “to endeavour to get someone to represent us in Parliament, who would agree with us on vital subjects, such as the Church of England and the necessity of religion. Now it seems to be considered ill-mannered to make any allusion to such subjects!

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.

But the strength of the minority consisted, not in the fact that the majority against them was small, but that it was decreasing. How quickly does the snowball grow into hugeness as it is rolled on, – but when the change comes in the weather how quickly does it melt, and before it is gone become a thing ugly, weak, and formless!

Well, then, I’ll hope in this case. But, uncle – ” “Well, my dear?” “I want your opinion, truly and really. If you were a girl – ” “I am perfectly unable to give any opinion founded on so strange an hypothesis.

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

He had a pride in being a poor man of a high family; he had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he was proud; and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently to himself.

It is good to be beautiful, but it should come of God and not of the hairdresser. And personal dignity is a great possession; but a man should struggle for it no more than he would for beauty.

They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man, – of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one, – will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber.

How happy could he be if it were only possible for him to go away, and become even a curate in a parish, without his wife! Would there ever come to him a time of freedom? Would she ever die? He was older than she, and of course he would die first. Would it not be a fine thing if he could die at once, and thus escape from his misery?