“Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency." The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray.”

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About Anthony Trollope

English novelist and civil servant, Victorian era

Anthony Trollope was an English novelist of the Victorian era. He is best known for his long, carefully observed novels about social life, public institutions, and the routines of work and class in 19th-century England. Trollope also worked as a civil servant, and that experience shaped much of his fiction. His writing is noted for its clear style and close attention to everyday conduct, especially the pressures of duty, ambition, and social expectation.

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Books by Anthony Trollope

Barchester Towers

1999

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Framley Parsonage

2016

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The Warden

1984

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The three clerks

2004

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Cousin Henry

1879

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