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Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2) QUOTES

Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2) QUOTES

1 " I sometimes think you despise poetry,' said Phineas.
'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

2 " But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be 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. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

3 " There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one's mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken away from him in some important crisis of his life, and that his conduct should be arranged for him, either this way or that, by some divine power if it were possible, - by some patriarchal power in the absence of divinity, - or by chance, even, if nothing better than chance could be found to do it? But no one dares to cast the die, and to go honestly by the hazard. There must be the actual necessity of obeying the die, before even the die can be of any use. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

4 " 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 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 an women upon the earth "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

5 " I hate a stupid man who can't talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don’t like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect. I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth and all that kind of thing. . . A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room. But a man who can't show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

6 " But she knew this,—that it was necessary for her happiness that she should devote herself to some one. All the elegancies and outward charms of life were delightful, if only they could be used as the means to some end. As an end themselves they were nothing. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

7 " It is seldom that we know anything accurately on any subject that we have not made matter of careful study," said Mr. Monk, "and very often do not do so even then. We are very apt to think that we men and women understand one another; but most probably you know nothing even of the modes of thought of the man who lives next door to you. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

8 " Love is involuntary. It does not often run in a yoke with prudence. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

9 " Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

10 " Men who think much want to speak often, "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

11 " The fight has been going on since...dominion in this world has found itself capable of sustentation by the exercise of fear as to the world to come. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

12 " Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends? "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

13 " There are general laws current in the world as to morality. 'Thou shalt not steal,' for instance. That has “necessarily been current as a law through all nations. But the first man you meet in the street will have ideas about theft so different from yours, that, if you knew them as you know your own, you would say that this law and yours were not even founded on the same principle. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

14 " In former days the Earl had been a man quite capable of making himself disagreeable, and probably had not yet lost the power of doing so. Of all our capabilities this is the one which clings longest to us. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

15 " Who is there that abstains from reading that which is printed in abuse of himself? "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

16 " But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me—my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,—as a bewildered idiot. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

17 " Of one small circumstance that had occurred, he felt quite sure that Mr. Kennedy knew nothing. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

18 " In the first place, he is a gentleman," continued Violet. "Then he is a man of spirit. And then he has not too much spirit;—not that kind of spirit which makes some men think that they are the finest things going. His manners are perfect;—not Chesterfieldian, and yet never offensive. He never browbeats any one, and never toadies any one. He knows how to live easily with men of all ranks, without any appearance of claiming a special status for himself. If he were made Archbishop of Canterbury to-morrow, I believe he would settle down into the place of the first subject in the land without arrogance, and without false shame. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

19 " And I think that when once he had learned the art of arranging his words as he stood upon his legs, and had so mastered his voice as to have obtained the ear of the House, the work of his life was not difficult. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)

20 " The rising in life of our familiar friends is, perhaps, the bitterest morsel of the bitter bread which we are called upon to eat in life. "

― Anthony Trollope , Phineas Finn (Palliser, #2)