Anthony Trollope

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent.

Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

When it comes to money nobody should give up anything.

What is there that money will not do?

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

I do like a little romance... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.