Anthony Trollope Quotes on Truth

8 quotes

  1. [An attorney] can find it consistent with his dignity to turn wrong into right, and right into wrong, to abet a lie, nay to create, disseminate, and with all the play of his wit, give strength to the basest of lies, on behalf of the basest of scoundrels.

  2. Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

  3. There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.

  4. Needless to deny that the normal London plumber is a dishonest man. We do not even allow ourselves to think so. That question, as to the dishonesty of mankind generally, is one that disturbs us greatly;- whether a man in all grades of life will by degrees train his honesty to suit his own book, so that the course of life which he shall bring himself to regard as soundly honest shall, if known to his neighbours, subject him to their reproof. We own to a doubt whether the honesty of a bishop would shine bright as the morning star to the submissive ladies who now worship him, if the theory of life upon which he lives were understood by them in all its bearings.

  5. He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.

  6. It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.

  7. 'I can never bring myself to believe it, John,' said Mary Walker, the pretty daughter of Mr. George Walker, attorney, of Silverbridge.

  8. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.

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