Marriage Quote by Anthony Trollope

Romance, Trollope suggests, is often just the ego enjoying a hard puzzle. He strips “love” of its flattering mystique and recasts it as a motivation system: men want what resists them, not necessarily what sustains them. The key word is “instigated.” Desire isn’t presented as noble or spontaneous; it’s provoked, almost mechanically, by “difficulty of pursuit.” Courtship becomes a sport with a scoreboard, and affection looks suspiciously like appetite sharpened by scarcity.

Then comes the Victorian pivot: marriage as chastening, fastening, duty. Trollope isn’t merely endorsing matrimony as moral glue; he’s diagnosing how social structures try to domesticate volatile impulses. “Chastened” implies correction and restraint, like breaking a horse. “Fastened” is even colder: love as something that must be bolted down because it won’t stay put on its own. The subtext is bluntly gendered and socially observant: men, granted more freedom to roam and romanticize conquest, mistake the adrenaline of pursuit for depth. Marriage, with its public vows and private obligations, forces a different emotional economy - less thrill, more responsibility.

Context matters: Trollope wrote in a world where marriage functioned as a financial contract, a reputational safeguard, and a social elevator as much as a personal bond. His sentence carries the realist’s skepticism toward courtship narratives that pretend passion is proof. What “works” here is the quiet cruelty of the formulation: love doesn’t die; it gets disciplined. And that discipline, he implies, is the only thing that turns chasing into choosing.