It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

Trollope wryly questions the flattering story people tell about their own moral improvement. What passes for “wisdom” in later life may not be the triumph of disciplined will or hard-won ethical insight, but simply the weakening of appetites and opportunities that once made wrongdoing alluring. The remark punctures self-congratulation: virtue can be accidental, produced by diminished temptation rather than increased character. At the same time, it carries a humane realism typical of Trollope—an insistence that moral life is shaped by circumstance, energy, and desire as much as by abstract principle. The quote invites readers to judge themselves and others less smugly, and to recognize how contingent “goodness” can be.