Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement, is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.
~
The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
"I am as ready to obey as a child;—but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason."
~
The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.
~
The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
A man desires to win a virgin heart, and is happy to know,—or at least to believe,—that he has won it. With a woman every former rival is an added victim to the wheels of the triumphant chariot in which she is sitting.
~
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
"Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?"
~
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached to himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of service to men and women upon earth.
~
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
"A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you'd like to get."
~
The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.
~
Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope
The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.
~
Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope
The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician's life.
~
Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope