Women, love and marriage
Marriage is central to Trollope's writing. He shows no marriage can succeed without love.
She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.
The tact of women excels the skill of men.
A woman is always angry with the woman, who has probably been quite passive, and rarely with the man, who is ever the real transgressor.
But when we have said that Mrs Stanhope knew how to dress, and used her knowledge daily, we have said all. Other purpose in life she had none
There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.
Female friendships are slower in their growth, for the suspicion of women is perhaps stronger than that of men.
Remember this, there is no tyranny to a woman like telling her of her duty.
"I hate that woman like poison. ... She is always playing a game, and it is such a small game that she plays! And she contributes so little to society. She is not witty nor well-informed - not even sufficiently ignorant or ridiculous to be a laughing-stock"
Lady Laura Kennedy, Phineas Finn
The world is harder to women than to men... a woman loses much by the chance of adverse circumstances a man only loses by his own misconduct.
Women are accustomed to look deeper into men at the first sight than other men will trouble themselves to do.
I have loved once, and no good has come of it. It was contrary to my nature to do so - to love in that mad passionate, self-sacrificing manner. But yet I did. I think I may say with certainty that I never shall be so foolish again.
Caroline Waddington, The Bertrams
For a true spirit of persecution one should always go to a woman; and the milder, the sweeter, the more loving ... the stonger will be that spirit within her.
Her eyes were bright, but then, also, they were mischievous. She could talk fluently enough;- but then, also, she could scold. She could assume sometimes the plumage of a dove; but then again she could occasionally ruffle her feathers like an angry kite.
Amelia Roper, The Small House at Allington
Her face was her fortune, and her fortune she knew was deteriorating from day to day.
There are both men and women to whom even the delays and disappointments of love are charming, ever when they exist to the detriment of hope.
Power and will are the gifts a woman most loves in a man.
All the virtues in the calendar, though they exist on each side, will not make a man and woman happy, unless there be sympathy.
Some one has said that grief is half removed when it is shared. How little that some one knew about it! Half removed! When it is duly shared between two loving hearts, does not love fly off with eight-tenths of it?
Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.
In matters of love men do not see clearly in their own affairs. They say that faint heart never won fair lady; and it is amazing to me how fair ladies are won, so faint are often men's hearts!
It is very hard sometimes to know how intensely we are loved, and of what value our presence is to those who love us.
Love desires an equal.
It is the man who has no peace at home that declares abroad that his wife is an angel.
What comfort does a woman get out of her husband unless she may be allowed to talk to him about everything?'
Long engagements are bad, no doubt. Everybody has always said so. But a long engagement may be better than none at all.
Man by instinct desires in his wife something softer, sweeter, more refined than himself.
Don't let any wife think that she will satisfy her husband by perfect obedience. Overmuch virtue in one's neighbours is never satisfactory to us sinners.
He was one of those men of whom it may be said that they have no possible claim to remain unmarried.
This moulding of a wife had failed ... as it always must fail.
To neither man nor woman does the world fairly begin till seated together in their first mutual home.
A wife does not cease to love her husband because he gets into trouble. She does not turn against him because others have quarrelled with him. She does not separate her lot from his because he is in debt! Those are the times when a wife, a true wife, sticks closest to her husband, and strives the hardest to lighten the weight of his cares by the tenderness of her love!
To the taste of any woman the enthusiasm of another woman is never very palatable.
Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.
The women of America have that strength of mind which has been wanting to those of Europe. In the United States woman will at last learn to exercise her proper mission.
An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids
Had she not been so much the lady, she might have been more the woman.
'But the men-cooks are the best,' said Nora ... 'All the things that women do, men do better. 'There are two things they can't do,' said Priscilla ... 'They can't suckle babies, and they can't forget themselves.'
She had learned, or thought that she had learned, that most girls are vapid, silly, and useless - given chiefly to pleasure-seeking and a hankering after lovers; and she had resolved that she would not be such a one.
A woman may forgive deceit, treachery, desertion, - even the preference given to a rival. She may forgive them and forget them; but I do not think that a woman can forget a blow. And as for forgiveness,- it is not the blow that she cannot forgive, but the meanness of spirit that made it possible.
Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future, never reached but always coming.
Perhaps the coming of guests is the best relief which can be afforded for the misery of ... domestic feuds.
Who does not know the way in which a man may set himself at work to gain admission into a woman's heart without addressing hardly a word to herself?
I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.
It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies— who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two— that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself.
