Anthony Trollope

Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, — in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.

Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.

Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.

Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.

He must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise me by my face.

When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer.

No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others.

Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.

From all evil against which the law bars you, you should be barred, at an infinite distance, by honour, by conscience, and nobility.

Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.

"I think it is so glorious," said the American. "There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty."

But how shall I excuse it? There are things done which are as holy as the heavens, — which are clear before God as the light of the sun, which leave no stain on the conscience, and which yet the malignity of man can invest with the very …

People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.

She certainly had a little syllogism in her head as to the Duke ruling the borough, the Duke's wife ruling the Duke, and therefore the Duke's wife ruling the borough; but she did not think it prudent to utter this on the present occasion.

You Ministers go on shuffling the old cards till they are so worn out and dirty that one can hardly tell the pips on them.

Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.

The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalising the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.

Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with …

He don't look the sort of fellow I like; but he's got money and he comes here, and he's good looking, — and therefore he'll be a success.

He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents.