Anthony Trollope

Some people fall to their feet like cats; but you are one of those who never fall at all. Others tumble about in the most unfortunate way, without any great fault of their own.

Audacity in wooing is a great virtue, but a man must measure even his virtues.

A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.

Then Lady Chiltern argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband.

The idea of putting old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members of Parliament generally.

Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you’ll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.

We do believe, — the majority among us does so, — that if we live and die in sin we shall after some fashion come to great punishment, and we believe also that by having pastors among us who shall be men of God, we may best aid ourselves and our children in avoiding this bitter end. But then the pastors and men of God can only be human, — cannot be altogether men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness. The torturing and the burning, as also to speak truth the luxury and the idleness, have, among us, been already conquered, but the idea of ascendancy remains.

I don’t know about that. — A poet doesn't want to marry a poetess, nor a philosopher a philosopheress.

He had never done any good, but he had always carried himself like a duke, and like a duke he carried himself to the end.

“They have been saying ever so long that the old Duke of Omnium means to marry her on his deathbed, but I don’t suppose there can be anything in it.”

“Why should he put it off for so very inopportune an occasion?” asked Phineas.

When two foes meet together in the same Chamber, one of whom advocates the personal government of an individual ruler, and the other that from of State, which has come to be called a Red Republic, they deal, no doubt, weighty blows of oratory at each other, but blows which never hurt at the moment. They may cut each other’s throats if they can find an opportunity; but they do not bite each other like dogs over a bone. But when opponents are almost in accord, as is always the case with our parliamentary gladiators, they are ever striving to give maddening little wounds through the joints of the harness.

“See what we Conservatives can do. In fact we will conserve nothing when we find that you do not desire to have it conserved any longer. ‘Quod minime reris Graiâ pandetur ab urbe.’”