We cannot bring ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any respect be wiser than ourselves. If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.
I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.
There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.
A pleasant letter I hold to be the pleasantest thing that this world has to give.
It’s dogged as does it. It ain’t thinking about it.
I cannot hold with those who want to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.
Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.
There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.
You men find so many angels in your travels. You have been honester than some. You have generally been off with the old angel before you were with the new, as far at least as I knew.
The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments.
What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.
I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.
To get away well is so very much! And to get away well is often so very difficult!
Of all hatreds that the world produces, a wife’s hatred for her husband, when she does hate him, is the strongest.
I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston.
The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.
Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.
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 was essentially a truth-speaking man, if only he know how to speak the truth.
The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.