The Way We Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future,—never reached but always coming.

Nothing perhaps is so efficacious in preventing men from marrying as the tone in which married women speak of the struggles made in that direction by their unmarried friends.

Nothing ever goes so quick as a Hansom cab when a man starts for a dinner-party a little too early;—nothing so slow when he starts too late.

Paul was lodging in Suffolk Street, close to Pall Mall—whence the way to Islington, across Oxford Street, across Tottenham Court Road, across numerous squares north-east of the Museum, seems to be long. The end of Goswell Road is the outside of the world in that direction, and Islington is beyond the end of Goswell Road.

In social life we hardly stop to consider how much of that daring spirit which gives mastery comes from hardness of heart rather than from high purpose, or true courage.

I think, too, that they who grumble at the times, as Horace did, and declare that each age is worse than its forerunner, look only at the small things beneath their eyes, and ignore the course of the world at large."

If the accused one be near enough to ourselves to make the accusation a matter of personal pain, of course we disbelieve. But, if the distance be beyond this, we are almost ready to think that anything may be true of anybody.

Masses of men will almost feel that a certain amount of injustice ought to be inflicted on their betters, so as to make things even, and will persuade themselves that a criminal should be declared to be innocent, because the crime committed has had a tendency to oppress the rich and pull down the mighty from their seats.

in the way we live now,

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

When the mind is attuned to it, one is tempted to think that it is all so good. One cries at one's own pathos, laughs at one's own humour, and is lost in admiration at one's own sagacity and knowledge."