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Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable not because it is desirable to have something to do.

Anthony Trollope

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Anthony Trollope
Age: 67 †
Born: 1815
Born: April 24
Died: 1882
Died: December 6
Autobiographer
Biographer
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Desirable
Offer
Suppose
Offers
Done
Something
Things

More quotes by Anthony Trollope

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Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the United States.
Anthony Trollope
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But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.
Anthony Trollope
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They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.
Anthony Trollope
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Would it not be better to go home and live at the family park all the year round, and hunt, and attend Quarter Sessions, and be able to declare morning and evening with a clear conscience that the country was going to the dogs? Such was the mental working of many a Conservative who supported Mr. Daubeny on this occasion.
Anthony Trollope
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Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.
Anthony Trollope
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Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
Anthony Trollope
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People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know better.
Anthony Trollope
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Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent.
Anthony Trollope
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As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.
Anthony Trollope
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Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.
Anthony Trollope
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It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.
Anthony Trollope
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I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything.
Anthony Trollope
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But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?
Anthony Trollope
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The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.
Anthony Trollope
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To feel that your hours are filled to overflowing, that you can barely steal minutes enough for sleep, that the welfare of many is entrusted to you, that the world looks on and approves, that some good is always being done to others -- above all things some good to your country -- that is happiness.
Anthony Trollope
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When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.
Anthony Trollope
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The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.
Anthony Trollope
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Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
Anthony Trollope
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Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.
Anthony Trollope
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In former days, when there were Whigs instead of Liberals, it was almost a rule of political life that all leading Whigs sould be uncles, brothers-in-law, or cousins to each other. This was pleasant and gave great consistency to the party but the system has now gone out of vogue.
Anthony Trollope