Barchester Towers Quotes

“Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only be shown that either in politics or religion he does not belong to some new school established within the last score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era, an era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned; and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“He possessed the tact of becoming instantly intimate with women without giving rise to any fear of impertinence. He had about him somewhat of the propensities of a tame cat. It seemed quite natural that he should be petted, caressed, and treated with familiar good nature, and that in return he should purr, and be sleek and graceful, and above all never show his claws. Like other tame cats, however, he had his claws, and sometimes made them dangerous.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the signboard at the coner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge?”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reach us that they have done so.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“With the rich, experience has already taught him that a different line of action is necessary. Men in the upper walks of life do not mind being cursed, and the women, presuming that it be done in delicate phrase, rather like it.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“As a general rule, it is highly desirable that ladies should keep their temper: a woman when she storms always makes herself ugly, and usually ridiculous also. There is nothing so odious to man as a virago. Though Theseus loved an Amazon, he showed his love but roughly, and from the time of Theseus downward, no man ever wished to have his wife remarkable rather for forward prowess than retiring gentleness. A low voice "is an excellent thing in woman.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Morning parties, as a rule, are failures. People never know how to get away from them gracefully.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“The author now leaves him in the hands of his readers: not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man, without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts which he has striven to learn.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Few men do understand the nature of a woman’s heart till years have robbed such understanding of its value.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“If a husband be not master of his wife´s heart, he has no right to her fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Wise people, when they are in the wrong, always put themselves right by finding fault with the people against whom they have sinned.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“A joke that required to be laughed at was, with him, not worth uttering. He could appreciate by a keener sense than that of his ears the success of his wit, and would see in the eyes of his audience whether or no he was understood and appreciated.”
― Anthony Trollope , Barchester Towers

“... I may question the infallibility of the teachers, but I hope that I shall not therefore be accused of doubt as to the thing to be taught.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“Some men have a great gift of making money, but they can't spend it. Others can't put two shillings together, but they have a great talent for all sorts of outlay. I begin to think that my genius is wholly in the latter line.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of a man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the sign-board at the corner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“His feelings towards his friends were, that while they stuck to him he would stick to them; that he would work with them shoulder to shoulder; that he would be faithful to the faithful. He knew nothing of the beautiful love which can be true to a false friend.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

“A low voice is an excellent thing in woman.”
― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers