Anthony Hope > Quotes

“For my part, if a man must needs be a knave I would have him a debonair knave... It makes your sin no worse as I conceive, to do it à la mode and stylishly.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know).”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“If love were the only thing, I
would follow you—in rags, if need be—to the world's end; for you hold
my heart in the hollow of your hand! But is love the only thing?
"I know people write and talk as if it were. Perhaps, for some, Fate lets
it be. Ah, if I were one of them! But if love had been the only thing, you
would have let the King die in his cell.
Honour binds a woman too, Rudolf. My honour lies in being true to
my country and my House. I don't know why God has let me love you;
but I know that I must stay.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank God that I love the noblest lady in the world, the most gracious and beautiful, and that there was nothing in my love that made her fall short in her high duty.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“God save the King!"

Old Sapt's mouth wrinkled into a smile.

"God save 'em both!" he whispered.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“But if it be never - if I can never hold sweet converse again with her, or look upon her face, or know from her her love; why, then, this side the grave, I will live as becomes the man whom she loves...”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“Ah! but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was given to him ....”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“A real king's life is perhaps a hard one; but a pretended king's is, I warrant, much harder.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“It is my belief that, given the necessary physical likeness, it was far easier to pretend to be king of Ruritania than it would have been to personate my next-door neighbor.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“For my part, if a man must needs be a knave, I would have him a debonair knave, and I liked Rupert Hentzau better than his long-faced, close-eyed companions.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the weakness of our nature.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“وَ كانَ شُعوري بِالرِّضا أشَدَّ مِنْه في أيِّ وَقْتٍ مَضى ؛ فَقَدْ
كُنْتُ ، عَلى الأقَل أفْعَلُ شَيْئًا ؛ والعَمَلُ ، رَغْمَ أنهُ لا يُمْكِنُ أنْ
يُعالجَ الحُبَّ ، هُوَ مَعَ ذَلِكَ نَوْعٌ مِنَ المُخَدِّرِ لَهُ.”
― Anthony Hope

“Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.”
― Anthony Hope

“His foe was folly and his weapon wit.”
― Anthony Hope

“La luz dentro de ella era como un faro, y nunca más volvería a la oscuridad.”
― Anthony Hope

“Great men may become indifferent as to what the papers say about them; I had never attained to this exalted state of mind.”
― Anthony Hope, Phroso

“Helga never will admit that she is clever, yet I find she discovers from me what she wants to know, and I suspect hides successfully the small matters of which she in her wifely discretion deems I had best remain ignorant. Being thus able to manage me, she was equal to coping with the butler.”
― Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau

“Euphrosyne leant forward, clasping her hands, and said to me: ‘Have you killed him?’

The question vexed me. It would have been civil to accompany it, at all events, with an inquiry as to my own health.”
― Anthony Hope, Phroso

“For myself, I thank Heaven that I am well rid of this same troublesome passion of love that likens one man to a lion and another to a fox.”
― Anthony Hope, The Chronicles of Count Antonio

“You should always trust a man...just as far as you must.”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“a person with a position in society has responsibilities”
― Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

“We Neopalians like a man who can be angry, and I began to think you never would.’

‘I am not the least angry,’ said I with great indignation. I hate being told that I am angry when I am merely showing firmness.”
― Anthony Hope

“Phroso made no comment on this; and the moment I had said it I heard a voice below, a voice I knew very well.

‘What’s the ladder here for, my friend?’ it asked.

‘It enables one to ascend or descend, my lord,’ answered Kortes’s grave voice, without the least touch of irony.”
― Anthony Hope, Phroso

“It is only likely frauds that are detected.”
― Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau

“Everything depends on the point of view and is rich in varying aspects. A picture is sublime from one corner of the room, a daub from another; a woman's full face may be perfect, her profile a disappointment; above all, what you admire in yourself becomes highly distasteful in your neighbor. The moral is, I suppose, Tolerance; or if not that, something else which has escaped me.”
― Anthony Hope, The Indiscretion of the Duchess

“Well, I take it that when a man comes to die, love is more to him than a kingdom; it may be, if we could see truly, that it is more to him even while he lives.”
― Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau

“I have known the sun when I saw it, even though clouds dimmed its face.”
― Anthony Hope, The Heart of Princess Osra

“What more passed between them I do not know. I think that the Queen told my wife more, but women will sometimes keep women’s secrets even from their husbands; though they love us, yet we are always in some sort the common enemy, against whom they join hands.”
― Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau

“Now some of the Hentzaus (of whom history tells us of many) have been good, and some have been bad; and the good fear God, while the bad do not; but neither the good nor the bad fear anything in the world besides. Hence, for good or ill, they do great deeds and risk their lives as another man risks a penny.”
― Anthony Hope, Great Adventure Stories

“There is a matter on my conscience which I cannot excuse but may as well confess. To deceive a maiden is a very sore thing, so sore that it had made us all hot against Constantine; but it may be doubted by a cool mind whether it is worse, nay, whether it is not more venial than to contrive the murder of a lawful wife. Poets have paid more attention to the first offence – maybe they know more about it – the law finds greater employment, on the whole, in respect to the second.”
― Anthony Hope, Phroso