Anthony Trollope

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

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.

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

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

A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.

But she knew this,—that it was necessary for her happiness that she should devote herself to some one. All the elegancies and outward charms of life were delightful, if only they could be used as the means to some end. As an end themselves they were nothing.

Nothing surely is as potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small dainty task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

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

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

A farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go. Never throws out curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master he is never showy. He does not paw and prance, and arch his neck, and bid the world admire his beauties...and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.

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

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.

She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

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

This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.

To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.