Anthony Trollope Quotes

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

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

There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been.

And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.

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

A woman's weapon is her tongue.

A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency." The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray.