Anthony Trollope

No doubt there were other first cousins as badly off, or perhaps worse, as to whom the Duchess would care nothing whether they were rich or poor, — married or single; but then they were first cousins who had not had the advantage of interesting the Duchess.

“Isn‘t there some trouble about money?”

“They wouldn‘t be very rich, Duchess.”

“What a blessing for them! But then, perhaps, they‘d be very poor.”

“They would be rather poor.”

“Which is not a blessing.”

The natural man will probably be manly. The affected man cannot be so.

The property of manliness in a man is a great possession, but perhaps there is none that is less understood, — which is more generally accorded where it does not exist, nor more frequently disallowed where it prevails.

“He is such a gentleman; — and, at the same time, the most abstract and the most concrete man that I know.”

“Abstract and concrete!”

“You are bound to use adjectives of that sort now, Miss Palliser, if you mean to be anybody in conversation.”

I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he‘ll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.

“Not in the least. I have but one ambition.”

“And that is — ?”

“To be the serviceable slave of my country.”

“A master is more serviceable than a slave,” said the old man.

“No; no; I deny it. I can admit much from you, but I cannot admit that. The politician who becomes the master of his country sinks from the statesman to the tyrant.”

I don't much admire your taste, my dear, because he‘s a hundred and fifty years old; — and what there is of him comes chiefly from the tailor.

“Would that be justice, ladies?” asked the just man.

“It would be success, Mr. Low, — which is a great deal the better thing of the two.”

The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.

Your nature is decimals. I run after units.

I know very well that if you get men who are really, — really swells, for that is what it is, Mr. Low, — and pay them well enough, and so make it really an important thing, they can browbeat any judge and hoodwink any jury.