Explore "Phineas Finn" by Anthony Trollope on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the day following Madame Goesler's dinner party, Phineas, though he was early at his office, was not able to do much work, still feeling that as regarded the realities of the world, his back was broken. He might no doubt go on learning, and, after a time, might be able to exert himself in a perhaps useful, but altogether uninteresting kind of way, doing his work simply because it was there to be done -- as the carter or the tailor does his; -- and from the same cause, knowing that a man must have bread to live. But as for ambition, and the idea of doing good, and the love of work for work's sake -- as for the elastic springs of delicious and beneficent labour -- all that was over for him. He would have worked from day till night, and from night till day, and from month till month throughout the year to have secured for Violet Effingham the assurance that her husband's position was worthy of her own. But now he had no motive for such work as this.
As long as he took the public pay, he would earn it; and that was all.