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Girls Like You Are Responsible For All The Tiresome Colorless Marriages; All Those Ghastly Inefficiencies That Pass As Feminine Qualities. What A Blow It Must Be When A Man With Imagination Marries The Beautiful Bundle Of Clothes That He's Been Building Ideals Around, And Finds That She's Just A Weak, Whining, Cowardly Mass Of Affectations!

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Girls Like You Are

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Girls Like You Are Responsible For All The Tiresome Colorless Marriages; All Those Ghastly Inefficiencies That Pass As Feminine Qualities. What A Blow It Must Be When A Man With Imagination Marries The Beautiful Bundle Of Clothes That He's Been Building Ideals Around, And Finds That She's Just A Weak, Whining, Cowardly Mass Of Affectations!

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The Notion Of Sitting Down And Conjuring Up, Not Only Words In Which To Clothe Thoughts But Thoughts Worthy Of Being Clothed--the Whole Thing Was Absurdly Beyond His Desires.

You Have To Develop A Conscience And If On Top Of That You Have Talent So Much The Better. But If You Have Talent Without Conscience, You Are Just One Of Many Thousand Journalists.

The Faces Of Most American Women Over Thirty Are Relief Maps Of Petulant And Bewildered Unhappiness.

First You Take A Drink, Then The Drink Takes A Drink, Then The Drink Takes You.

Everywhere We Go And Move On And Change, Something's Lost--something's Left Behind. You Can't Ever Quite Repeat Anything, And I've Been So Yours, Here--

In A Few Days I'll Have Lived One Score And Three Days In This Vale Of Tears. On I Plod-always Bored, Often Drunk, Doing No Penance For My Faults-rather Do I Become More Tolerant Of Myself From Day To Day, Hardening My Crystal Heart With Blasphemous Humor And Shunning Only Toothpicks, Pathos, And Poverty As Being The Three Unforgivable Things In Life.

She Saw Him The First Day On Board, And Then Her Heart Sank Into Her Shoes As She Realized At Last How Much She Wanted Him. No Matter What His Past Was, No Matter What He Had Done. Which Was Not To Say That She Would Ever Let Him Know, But Only That He Moved Her Chemically More Than Anyone She Had Ever Met, That All Other Men Seemed Pale Beside Him.

Never Walk Near The Bed; To A Ghost Your Ankle Is Your Most Vulnerable Part-once In Bed, You're Safe; He May Lie Around Under The Bed All Night, But You're Safe As Daylight. If You Still Have Doubts Pull The Blanket Over Your Head.

No Grand Idea Was Ever Born In A Conference, But A Lot Of Foolish Ideas Have Died There.

"oh, You Want Too Much!" She Cried To Gatsby. "i Love You Now - Isn't That Enough? I Can't Help What's Past." She Began To Sob Helplessly. "i Did Love Him Once-but I Loved You Too." Gatsby's Eyes Opened And Closed. "you Loved Me Too?" He Repeated. "even That's A Lie," Said Tom Savagely. "she Didn't Know You Were Alive. Why - There're Things Between Daisy And Me That You'll Never Know, Things That Neither Of Us Can Ever Forget."

Don't Let Yourself Feel Worthless: Often Through Life You Will Really Be At Your Worst When You Seem To Think Best Of Yourself; And Don't Worry About Losing Your "personality," As You Persist In Calling It: At Fifteen You Had The Radiance Of Early Morning, At Twenty You Will Begin To Have The Melancholy Brilliance Of The Moon, And When You Are My Age You Will Give Out, As I Do, The Genial Golden Warmth Of 4 P.m.

I’m Thirty,” I Said. “i’m Five Years Too Old To Lie To Myself And Call It Honor

They Always Believe That 'things Are In A Bad Way Now,' But They 'haven't Any Faith In These Idealists.' One Minute They Call Wilson 'just A Dreamer, Not Practical'- A Year Later They Rail At Him For Making His Dreams Realities. They Haven't Clear Logical Ideas On One Single Subject Except A Sturdy, Stolid Opposition To All Change. They Don't Think Uneducated People Should Be Highly Paid, But They Won't See That If They Don't Pay The Uneducated People Their Children Are Going To Be Uneducated Too, And We're Going Round And Round In A Circle. That- Is The Great Middle Class.

Well, Let It Pass, He Thought; April Is Over, April Is Over. There Are All Kinds Of Love In The World, But Never The Same Love Twice. --the Sensible Thing

Very Few Of The People Who Accentuate The Futility Of Life Remark The Futility Of Themselves. Perhaps They Think That In Proclaiming The Evil Of Living They Somehow Salvage Their Own Worth From The Ruin - But They Don't, Even You And I.

Futility Of Life

It’s A Great Advantage Not To Drink Among Hard Drinking People.

I Want You To Take A Red-hot Bath As Hot As You Can Bear It, And Just Relax Your Nerves. You Can Read In The Tub If You Wish.

Rosemary Bubbled With Delight At The Trunks. Her Naivete Responded Whole-heartedly To The Expensive Simplicity Of The Divers, Unaware Of Its Complexity And Its Lack Of Innocence, Unaware That It Was All A Selection Of Quality Rather Than Quantity From The Run Of The World's Bazaar; And That The Simplicity Of Behavior Also, The Nursery-like Peace And Good Will, The Emphasis On The Simpler Virtues, Was Part Of A Desperate Bargain With The Gods And Had Been Attained Through Struggles She Could Not Have Guessed At.

I'm Inclined To Reserve All Judgments, A Habit That Has Opened Up Many Curious Natures To Me And Also Made Me The Victim Of Not A Few Veteran Bores.

A New World, Material Without Being Real, Where Poor Ghosts, Breathing Dreams Like Air, Drifted Fortuitously About.

Well, You Never Knew Exactly How Much Space You Occupied In People's Lives.

Tender Is The Night

And Yale Is November, Crisp And Energetic.

How The Unforgettable Faces Of Dusk Would Blend To Her, The Myriad Footsteps, A Thousand Overtures, Would Blend To Her Footsteps; And There Would Be More Drunkenness Than Wine In The Softness Of Her Eyes On His.

Once One Is Caught Up Into The Material World Not One Person In Ten Thousand Finds The Time To Form Literary Taste, To Examine The Validity Of Philosophic Concepts For Himself, Or To Form What, For Lack Of A Better Phrase, I Might Call The Wise And Tragic Sense Of Life.

Love Is Fragile -- She Was Thinking -- But Perhaps The Pieces Are Saved, The Things That Hovered On Lips, That Might Have Been Said. The New Love-words, The Tenderness Learned, And Treasured Up For The Next Lover.

It Was A Grey Day, That Least Fleshly Of All Weathers; A Day Of Dreams And Far Hopes And Clear Visions. It Was A Day Easily Associated With Those Abstract Truths And Purities That Dissolve In The Sunshine Or Fade Out In Mocking Laughter By The Light Of The Moon. The Trees And Clouds Were Carved In Classical Severity; The Sounds Of The Countryside Had Harmonized To A Monotone, Metallic As A Trumpet, Breathless As The Grecian Urn.

All That Kept Her From Breaking Was That It Was Not An Image Of Strength That Was Leaving Her; She Would Be Just As Strong Without Him.

Then It Had Not Been Merely The Stars To Which He Had Aspired On That June Night. He Came Alive To Me, Delivered Suddenly From The Womb Of His Purposeless Splendour.

There Was One Of His Lonelinesses Coming, One Of Those Times When He Walked The Streets Or Sat, Aimless And Depressed, Biting A Pencil At His Desk. It Was A Self-absorption With No Comfort, A Demand For Expression With No Outlet, A Sense Of Time Rushing By, Ceaselessly And Wastefully - Assuaged Only By That Conviction That There Was Nothing To Waste, Because All Efforts And Attainments Were Equally Valueless.

It Is Difficult For Young People To Live Things Down. We Will Tolerate Vice, Grand Larceny And The Quieter Forms Of Murder In Our Contemporaries... But Our Children's Friends Must Show A Blank Service Record.

Gatsby Turned Out All Right At The End; It Is What Preyed On Gatsby, What Foul Dust Floated In The Wake Of His Dreams That Temporarily Closed Out My Interest In The Abortive Sorrows And Short-winded Elations Of Men.

Sometimes It Is Harder To Deprive Oneself Of A Pain Than Of A Pleasure And The Memory So Possessed Him That For The Moment There Was Nothing To Do But To Pretend.

Trouble Has No Necessary Connection With Discouragement. Discouragement Has A Germ Of Its Own, As Different From Trouble As Arthritis Is Different From A Stiff Joint.

Selfish People Are In A Way Terribly Capable Of Great Loves.

Rosemary Felt That This Swim Would Become The Typical One Of Her Life, The One That Would Always Pop Up In Her Memory At The Mention Of Swimming.

I Can’t Exactly Describe How I Feel But It’s Not Quite Right. And It Leaves Me Cold.

Once We Were One Person, And Always It Will Be A Little That Way.

There Used To Be Two Kinds Of Kisses: First When Girls Were Kissed And Deserted; Second, When They Were Engaged. Now There's A Third Kind, Where The Man Is Kissed And Deserted. If Mr. Jones Of The Nineties Bragged He'd Kissed A Girl, Everyone Knew He Was Through With Her. If Mr. Jones Of 1919 Brags The Same, Everyone Knows It's Because He Can't Kiss Her Any More. Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

Isn't Hollywood A Dump-in The Human Sense Of The Word. A Hideous Town, Pointed Up By The Insulting Gardens Of Its Rich, Full Of The Human Spirit At A New Low Of Debasement.

He Knew That When He Kissed This Girl, And Forever Wed His Unutterable Visions To Her Perishable Breath, His Mind Would Never Romp Again Like The Mind Of God.

"if It Wasn’t For The Mist We Could See Your Home Across The Bay," Said Gatsby. "you Always Have A Green Light That Burns At The End Of Your Dock." Daisy Put Her Arm Through His Abruptly But He Seemed Absorbed In What He Had Just Said. Possibly It Had Occurred To Him That The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. Compared To The Great Distance That Had Separated Him From Daisy It Had Seemed Very Near To Him, Almost Touching Her. It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was Again A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Things Had Diminished By One.

And Lastly From That Period I Remember Riding In A Taxi One Afternoon Between Very Tall Buildings Under A Mauve And Rosy Sky; I Began To Bawl Because I Had Everything I Wanted And Knew I Would Never Be So Happy Again.

The Best Of America Drifts To Paris. The American In Paris Is The Best American. It Is More Fun For An Intelligent Person To Live In An Intelligent Country. France Has The Only Two Things Toward Which We Drift As We Grow Older—intelligence And Good Manners.

Boredom Is Not An End-product, Is Comparatively Rather An Early Stage In Life And Art. You've Got To Go By Or Past Or Through Boredom, As Through A Filter, Before The Clear Product Emerges.

I Think That We Already Have A Really Good System In Town, But I Have A Vision That It Could Be Even Better. My Vision Is That Academic Excellence Is The Area That We Should Pursue More, Coupled With Fiscal Discipline.

Academic Excellence

Human Sympathy Has Its Limits, And We Were Contented To Let All Their Tragic Arguments Fade With The City Lights Behind.

I Just Couldn't Make The Grade As A Hack-that, Like Everything Else, Requires A Certain Practiced Excellence.

And, After Boasting This Way Of My Tolerance, I Come To The Admission That It Has A Limit. Conduct May Be Founded On The Hard Rock Or The Wet Marshes, But After A Certain Point I Don’t Care What It’s Founded On. When I Came Back From The East Last Autumn I Felt That I Wanted The World To Be In Uniform And At A Sort Of Moral Attention Forever; I Wanted No More Riotous Excursions With Privileged Glimpses Into The Human Heart. Only Gatsby, The Man Who Gives His Name To This Book, Was Exempt From My Reaction—gatsby, Who Represented Everything For Which I Have An Unaffected Scorn.

He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths.

I Was Rather Literary In College—one Year I Wrote A Series Of Very Solemn And Obvious Editorials For The 'yale News.'—and Now I Was Going To Bring Back All Such Things Into My Life And Become Again That Most Limited Of All Specialists, The 'well-rounded Man.' This Isn’t Just An Epigram—life Is Much More Successfully Looked At From A Single Window, After All.

Everything That Begins, Begins With Blood.

I Want To Do Everything In The World With You.

I Don’t Want Just Words. If That’s All You Have For Me, You’d Better Go

He Was Figuratively Following Along Beside Her As She Walked The Fence, Ready To Catch Her If She Should Fall.

His Youth Seemed Never So Vanished As Now In The Contrast Between The Utter Loneliness Of This Visit And That Riotous, Joyful Party Of Four Years Before. Things That Had Been The Merest Commonplaces Of His Life Then, Deep Sleep, The Sense Of Beauty Around Him, All Desire, Had Flown Away And The Gaps They Left Were Filled Only With The Great Listlessness Of His Disillusion.

Life Is Much More Successfully Looked At From A Single Window.

I Thought Of Gatsby's Wonder When He First Picked Out The Green Light At The End Of Daisy's Dock. He Had Come A Long Way To This Lawn And His Dream Must Have Seemed So Close That He Could Hardly Fail To Grasp It. He Did Not Know That It Was Already Behind Him. [- Nick Carroway]

Let Us Learn To Show Our Friendship For A Man When He Is Alive And Not After He Is Dead.

I'm One Of Those People Who Go Through The World Giving Other People Thrills, But Getting Few Myself Except Those I Read Into Men On Such Nights As These. I Have The Social Courage To Go On The Stage, But Not The Energy; I Haven't The Patience To Write Books; And I Never Met A Man I'd Marry. However, I'm Only Eighteen.

At Any Rate, Let Us Love For A While, For A Year Or So, You And Me. That's A Form Of Divine Drunkenness That We Can All Try. There Are Only Diamonds In The Whole World, Diamonds And Perhaps The Shabby Gift Of Disillusion.

The Test Of A First-rate Intelligence Is The Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas In Mind At The Same Time And Still Retain The Ability To Function.

Positive Thinking

He Had Seen Me Several Times, And Had Intended To Call On Me Long Before, But A Peculiar Combination Of Circumstances Had Prevented It.

Exploration Was For Those With A Measure Of Peasant Blood, Those With Big Thighs And Thick Ankles Who Could Take Punishment As They Took Bread And Salt, On Every Inch Of Flesh And Spirit.

I Felt That I Wanted The World To Be In Uniform And At A Sort Of Moral Attention Forever; I Wanted No More Riotous Excursions With Privileged Glimpses Into The Human Heart.

...the Test Of A First-rate Intelligence Is The Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas In The Mind At The Same Time, And Still Retain The Ability To Function. One Should, For Example, Be Able To See That Things Are Hopeless And Yet Be Determined To Make Them Otherwise. This Philosophy Fitted On To My Early Adult Life, When I Saw The Improbable, The Implausible, Often The "impossible," Come True.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

"what Are You Going To Do?" "can't Say - Run For President, Write -" "greenwich Village?" "good Heavens, No - I Said Write - Not Drink."

But There Was An Immediately Perceptible Vitality About Her As If The Nerves Of Her Body Were Continually Smouldering.

When I See A Beautiful Shell Like That I Can't Help Feeling A Regret About What's Inside It.

A Stirring Warmth Flowed From Her, As If Her Heart Was Trying To Come Out To You Concealed In One Of Those Breathless, Thrilling Words.

And He Could Not Tell Why The Struggle Was Worthwhile, Why He Had Determined To Use The Utmost Himself And His Heritage From The Personalities He Had Passed... He Stretched Out His Arms To The Crystalline, Radiant Sky. I Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All.

To Be Kind Is More Important Than To Be Right. Many Times, What People Need Is Not A Brilliant Mind That Speaks But A Special Heart That Listens.

I Hope I Haven't Given You The Impression That I Consider Kissing Intrinsically Irrational.

For Awhile After You Quit Keats All Other Poetry Seems To Be Only Whistling Or Humming.

That Voice Was A Deathless Song.

Even When The East Excited Me Most, Even When I Was Keenly Aware Of Its Superiority To The Broad, Sprawling, Swollen Towns Beyond The Ohio, With Their Interminable Inquisitions Which Only Spared Children And The Very Old-even Then It Had Always For Me A Quality Of Distortion.

She Was Feeling The Pressure Of The World Outside And She Wanted To See Him And Feel His Presence Beside Her And Be Reassured That She Was Doing The Right Thing After All.

He Could Transform The Barest Incident Into A Thing Of Curve And Contour.

If You Try To Create A Type, You May End With Nothing. If You Do A Good Job Of Creating An Individual, You May Succeed At Creating A Type.

It Was As If For The Remainder Of His Life He Was Condemned To Carry With Him The Egos Of Certain People, Early Met And Early Loved, And To Be Only As Complete As They Were Complete Themselves. There Was Some Element Of Loneliness Involved--so Easy To Be Loved--so Hard To Love.

They Weren't Happy, And Neither Of Them Had Touched The Chicken Or The Ale---and Yet They Weren't Unhappy Either. There Was An Unmistakable Air Of Natural Intimacy About The Picture And Anybody Would Have Said That They Were Conspiring Together.

There Are Only The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired.

Great Gatsby American Dream

What Was The Use Of Doing Great Things If I Could Have A Better Time Telling Her What I Was Going To Do?

Progress Was A Labyrinth ... People Plunging Blindly In And Then Rushing Wildly Back, Shouting That They Had Found It ... The Invisible King-the élan Vital-the Principle Of Evolution ... Writing A Book, Starting A War, Founding A School.

The Strongest Guard Is Placed At The Gateway To Nothing. Maybe Because The Condition Of Emptiness Is Too Shameful To Be Divulged.

Tender Is The Night

Now The Standard Cure For One Who Is Sunk Is To Consider Those In Actual Destitution Or Physical Suffering—this Is An All-weather Beatitude For Gloom In General And Fairly Salutary Day-time Advice For Everyone. But At Three O’clock In The Morning, A Forgotten Package Has The Same Tragic Importance As A Death Sentence, And The Cure Doesn’t Work—and In A Real Dark Night Of The Soul It Is Always Three O’clock In The Morning, Day After Day.

And In The End, We Were All Just Humans...drunk On The Idea That Love, Only Love, Could Heal Our Brokenness.

A Great Social Success Is A Pretty Girl Who Plays Her Cards As Carefully As If She Were Plain.

Tired, Tired With Nothing, Tired With Everything, Tired With The World’s Weight He Had Never Chosen To Bear.

Beauty Is Only To Be Admired, Only To Be Loved - To Be Harvested Carefully And Then Flung At A Chosen Lover Like A Gift Of Roses. It Seems To Me, So Far As I Can Judge Clearly At All, That My Beauty Would Be Used Like That.

Her Grey, Sun-strained Eyes Stared Straight Ahead, But She Had Deliberately Shifted Our Relations, And For A Moment I Thought I Loved Her. But I Am Slow-thinking And Full Of Interior Rules That Act As Brakes On My Desires, And I Knew That First I Had To Get Myself Definitely Out Of That Tangle Back Home.

Her Face Was Sad And Lovely With Bright Things In It, Bright Eyes And A Bright Passionate Mouth, But There Was An Excitement In Her Voice That Men Who Had Cared For Her Found Difficult To Forget: A Singing Compulsion, A Whispered “listen,” A Promise That She Had Done Gay, Exciting Things Just A While Since And That There Were Gay, Exciting Things Hovering In The Next Hour.

Intelligence Is Measured By A Person's Ability To See Validity Within Both Sides Of Contradicting Arguments.

It Is In The Twenties That The Actual Momentum Of Life Begins To Slacken, And It Is A Simple Soul Indeed To Whom As Many Things Are As Significant And Meaningful At Thirty As At Ten Years Before. At Thirty An Organ-grinder Is A More Or Less A Moth Eaten Man Who Grinds An Organ - And Once He Was An Organ-grinder! The Unmistakable Stigma Of Humanity Touches All Those Impersonal And Beautiful Things That Only Youth Ever Grasps In Their Impersonal Glory.

Experience Is The Name So Many People Give To Their Mistakes.

I Learned A Little Of Beauty - Enough To Know That It Had Nothing To Do With Truth.

In His Blue Gardens Men And Girls Came And Went Like Moths Among The Whisperings And The Champagne And The Stars.

Never Confuse A Single Defeat With A Final Defeat.

Tomorrow We Will Run Faster, Stretch Out Our Arms Farther.

I'm A Slave To My Emotions, To My Likes, To My Hatred Of Boredom, To Most Of My Desires

Beware The Artist Who's An Intellectual Also. The Artist Who Doesn't Fit.

I See You're Looking At My Cuff Buttons." I Hadn't Been Looking At Them, But I Did Now.

My Imagination Persisted In Sticking Horrors Into The Dark- So I Stuck My Imagination Into The Dark Instead, And Let It Look Out At Me.

I Think They're Very Attractive,' Abe Agreed. 'i Just Don't Think They're Attractive, That's All.

One Of Those Men Who Reach Such An Acute Limited Excellence At Twenty−one That Everything Afterward Savors Of Anti−climax.

You Are The Finest, Loveliest, Tenderest, And Most Beautiful Person I Have Ever Known—and Even That Is An Understatement.

One Girl Can Be Pretty - But A Dozen Are Only A Chorus.

Don't Forget Who You Are And Where You Come From.

Better Let It All Alone In The Depths Of Her Heart And The Depths Of The Sea.

When People Are Taken Out Of Their Depths They Lose Their Heads, No Matter How Charming A Bluff They May Put Up.

I Was In Love With A Whirlwind, So When The Girl Threw Me Over, I Went Home And Finished My Novel.

You Really Ought To Read More Books - You Know, Those Things That Look Like Blocks But Come Apart On One Side.

But With Every Word She Was Drawing Further And Further Into Herself, So He Gave That Up, And Only The Dead Dream Fought On As The Afternoon Slipped Away, Trying To Touch What Was No Longer Tangible, Struggling Unhappily, Undespairingly, Toward That Lost Voice Across The Room.

I Love This Simply Because It's Cute, And I Guess It's A Sign Of The Times In Many Respect. It's Pretty Much Saying You Complete Me, Only In The Sweetest Way Possible.

How Different It All Was From What You'd Planned.

Then There Came A Faraway, Booming Voice Like A Low, Clear Bell. It Came From The Center Of The Bowl And Down The Great Sides To The Ground And Then Bounced Toward Her Eagerly. 'you See I Am Fate,' It Shouted, 'and Stronger Than Your Puny Plans; And I Am How-things-turn-out And I Am Different From Your Little Dreams, And I Am The Flight Of Time And The End Of Beauty And Unfulfilled Desire; All The Accidents And Imperceptions And The Little Minutes That Shape The Crucial Hours Are Mine. I Am The Exception That Proves No Rules, The Limits Of Your Control, The Condiment In The Dish Of Life.

Life Is So Damned Hard, So Damned Hard... It Just Hurts People And Hurts People, Until Finally It Hurts Them So That They Can't Be Hurt Ever Any More. That's The Last And Worst Thing It Does.

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

Let Me Tell You About The Very Rich. They Are Different From You And Me. They Possess And Enjoy Early, And It Does Something To Them, Makes Them Soft Where We Are Hard, And Cynical Where We Are Trustful, In A Way That, Unless You Were Born Rich, It Is Very Difficult To Understand. They Think, Deep In Their Hearts, That They Are Better Than We Are Because We Had To Discover The Compensations And Refuges Of Life For Ourselves. Even When They Enter Deep Into Our World Or Sink Below Us, They Still Think That They Are Better Than We Are. They Are Different.

Young People Do Not Perceive At Once That The Giver Of Wounds Is The Enemy And The Quoted Tattle Merely The Arrow.

We Haven’t Met For Many Years, Said Daisy, Her Voice As Matter-of-fact As It Could Ever Be. "five Years Next November." The Automatic Quality Set Us All Back At Least Another Minute.

Over The Great Bridge, With The Sunlight Through The Girders Making A Constant Flicker Upon The Moving Cars, With The City Rising Up Across The River In White Heaps And Sugar Lumps All Built With A Wish Out Of Non-olfactory Money. The City Seen From The Queensboro Bridge Is Always The City Seen For The First Time, In Its First Wild Promise Of All The Mystery And The Beauty In The World.

I've Got An Adjective That Just Fits You.

Here Was A New Generation, Shouting The Old Cries, Learning The Old Creeds, Through A Revery Of Long Days And Nights; Destined Finally To Go Out Into That Dirty Gray Turmoil To Follow Love And Pride; A New Generation Dedicated More Than The Last To The Fear Of Poverty And The Worship Of Success; Grown Up To Find All Gods Dead, All Wars Fought, All Faiths In Man Shaken.

There's So Much Spring In The Air- There's So Much Lazy Sweetness In Your Heart.

It Was One Of Those Rare Smiles With A Quality Of Eternal Reassurance In It, That You May Come Across Four Or Five Times In Life.

It’s Just That I Feel So Sad These Wonderful Nights. I Sort Of Feel They’re Never Coming Again, And I’m Not Really Getting All I Could Out Of Them.

He Had No Plans, No Definite Intentions, Except To Kiss Her Lips Again, To Hold Her In His Arms.

In The Morning You Were Never Violently Sorry-- You Made No Resolutions, But If You Had Overdone It And Your Heart Was Slightly Out Of Order, You Went On The Wagon For A Few Days Without Saying Anything About It, And Waited Until An Accumulation Of Nervous Boredom Projected You Into Another Party.

I Was A Little Shocked At The Elaborateness Of The Lie.

Later She Remembered All The Hours Of The Afternoon As Happy -- One Of Those Uneventful Times That Seem At The Moment Only A Link Between Past And Future Pleasure, But Turn Out To Have Been The Pleasure Itself.

She Was A Faded But Still Lovely Woman Of Twenty-seven.

Fairies: Nature's Attempt To Get Rid Of Soft Boys By Sterilizing Them.

People Talk Of The Courage Of Convictions, But In Actual Life A Man's Duty To His Family May Make A Rigid Course Seem A Selfish Indulgence Of His Own Righteousness.

You Can Take Hollywood For Granted Like I Did, Or You Can Dismiss It With The Contempt We Reserve For What We Don't Understand. It Can Be Understood Too, But Only Dimly And In Flashes. Not Half A Dozen Men Have Ever Been Able To Keep The Whole Equation Of Pictures In Their Heads.

Prose Talent Depends On Having Something To Say And An Interesting, Highly Developed Way Of Saying It.

A Love Affair Is Like A Short Story--it Has A Beginning, A Middle, And An End. The Beginning Was Easy, The Middle Might Drag, Invaded By Commonplace, But The End, Instead Of Being Decisive And Well Knit With That Element Of Revelatory Surprise As A Well-written Story Should Be, It Usually Dissipated In A Succession Of Messy And Humiliating Anticlimaxes.

One Hurries Through, Even Though There's Time; The Past, The Continent, Is Behind; The Future Is The Glowing Mouth In The Side Of The Ship; The Dim, Turbulent Alley Is Too Confusedly The Present.

It Isn't Given To Us To Know Those Rare Moments When People Are Wide Open And The Lightest Touch Can Wither Or Heal. A Moment Too Late And We Can Never Reach Them Any More In This World. They Will Not Be Cured By Our Most Efficacious Drugs Or Slain With Our Sharpest Swords.

Amory: I Love You. Rosalind: I Love You- Now.

An Artist Is Someone Who Can Hold Two Opposing Viewpoints And Still Remain Fully Functional.

I Am One Of The Few Honest People That I Have Ever Known.

Great Gatsby Important

A Lot Of Young Girls Together Is A Romantic Secret Thing Like The First Sight Of Wild Ducks At Dawn.

I Was Within And Without. Simultaneously Enchanted And Repelled By The Inexhaustible Variety Of Life.

Great Gatsby Book

Family Quarrels Are Bitter Things. They Don't Go According To Any Rules. They're Not Like Aches Or Wounds, They're More Like Splits In The Skin That Won't Heal Because There's Not Enough Material.

Beauty And Love Pass, I Know... Oh, There's Sadness, Too. I Suppose All Great Happiness Is A Little Sad. Beauty Means The Scent Of Roses And Then The Death Of Roses-

Beauty And Love

I Hope You Make The Best Of It. And I Hope You See Things That Startle You. I Hope You Feel Things You Never Felt Before. I Hope You Meet People With A Different Point Of View. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of. If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start All Over Again.

Long Ago, There Was Something In Me, But Now That Thing Is Gone. Now That Thing Is Gone, That Thing Is Gone. I Cannot Cry. I Cannot Care. That Thing Will Come Back No More.

The Years Between Thirty-five And Sixty-five Revolve Before The Passive Mind As One Unexplained, Confusing Merry-go-round. True, They Are A Merry-go-round Of Ill-gaited And Wind-broken Horses, Painted First In Pastel Colors, Then In Dull Grays And Browns, But Perplexing And Intolerably Dizzy The Thing Is, As Never Were The Merry-go-rounds Of Childhood Or Adolescence; As Never, Surely, Were The Certain-coursed, Dynamic Roller-coasters Of Youth. For Most Men And Women These Thirty Years Are Taken Up With A Gradual Withdrawal From Life.

For Years Afterwards When Amory Thought Of Eleanor He Seemed Still To Hear The Wind Sobbing Around Him And Sending Little Chills Into The Places Beside His Heart. The Night When They Rode Up The Slope And Watched The Cold Moon Float Through The Clouds, He Lost A Further Part Of Him That Nothing Could Restore; And When He Lost It He Lost Also The Power Of Regretting It.

Their Lips Brushed Like Young Wild Flowers In The Wind.

It Understood You Just As Far As You Wanted To Be Understood, Believed In You As You Would Like To Believe In Yourself, And Assured You That It Had Precisely The Impression Of You That, At Your Best, You Hoped To Convey.

Great Gatsby Book

I Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All-

Intelligence Is A Mere Instrument Of Circumstances.

I Am Slow-thinking And Full Of Interior Rules That Act As Brakes On My Desires.

Great Gatsby Love

Though The Jazz Age Continued It Became Less And Less An Affair Of Youth. The Sequel Was Like A Children's Party Taken Over By The Elders.

Somewhere Inside Me There’ll Always Be The Person I Am To-night

Tender Is The Night

So When The Blue Smoke Of Brittle Leaves Was In The Air And The Wind Blew The Wet Laundry Stiff On The Line I Decided To Come Back Home.

When He Buys His Ties He Has To Ask If Gin Will Make Them Run.

When We Pulled Out Into The Winter Night And The Real Snow, Our Snow, Began To Stretch Out Beside Us And Twinkle Against The Windows, And The Dim Lights Of Small Wisconsin Stations Moved By, A Sharp Wild Brace Came Suddenly Into The Air. That's My Middle-west - Not The Wheat Or The Prairies Or The Lost Swede Towns, But The Thrilling Returning Trains Of My Youth And The Street Lamps And Sleigh Bells In The Frosty Dark And The Shadows Of Holly Wreaths Thrown By Lighted Windows On The Snow.

I Have Lived Hard And Ruined The Essential Innocence [sic] In Myself That Could Make It That Possible [sic], And The Fact That I Have Abused Liquor Is Something To Be Paid For With Suffering And Death Perhaps But Not Renunciation.

Suffering And Death

Unloved Women Have No Biographies-- They Have Histories

And After Reading Thoreau I Felt How Much I Have Lost By Leaving Nature Out Of My Life.

The Afternoon Had Made Them Tranquil For A While, As If To Give Them A Deep Memory For The Long Parting The Next Day Promised.

She Was Overstrained With Grief And Loneliness: Almost Any Shoulder Would Have Done As Well.

You Are The Loveliest Thing That I Have Ever Known.

Baltimore Is Warm But Pleasant... I Belong Here, Where Everything Is Civilized And Gay And Rotted And Polite.

How Strange To Have Failed As A Social Creature—even Criminals Do Not Fail That Way—they Are The Law's "loyal Opposition," So To Speak. But The Insane Are Always Mere Guests On Earth, Eternal Strangers Carrying Around Broken Decalogues That They Cannot Read.

She Was A Dark, Unenduring Little Flower - Yet He Thought He Detected In Her Some Quality Of Spiritual Reticence, Of Strength Drawn From Her Passive Acceptance Of All Things. In This He Was Mistaken.

He Had Waited Five Years And Bought A Mansion Where He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths - So That He Could 'come Over' Some Afternoon To A Stranger's Garden.

If Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures, Then There Was Something Gorgeous About Him, Some Heightened Sensitivity To The Promises Of Life, As If He Were Related To One Of Those Intricate Machines That Registered Earthquakes Ten Thousand Miles Away.

He Had Angered Providence By Resisting Too Many Temptations. There Was Nothing Left But Heaven, Where He Would Meet Only Those Who, Like Him, Had Wasted Earth.

Well, I Can't Describe Her Exactly-except To Say That She Was Beautiful. She Was-tremendously Alive.

Scratch A Yale Man With Both Hands And You'll Be Lucky To Find A Coast-guard. Usually You Find Nothing At All.

He Snatched Out His Hand Desperately As If To Snatch Only A Wisp Of Air, To Save A Fragment Of The Spot That She Had Made Lovely For Him. But It Was All Going By Too Fast Now For His Burred Eyes And He Knew That He Had Lost That Part Of It, The Freshest And The Best, Forever.

She Was A Mischief, And That Was A Satisfaction; No Longer Was She A Huntress Of Corralled Game

All The Time Something Within Her Was Crying For A Decision. She Wanted Her Life Shaped Now, Immediately — And The Decision Must Be Made By Some Force — Of Love, Of Money, Of Unquestionable Practicality — That Was Close At Hand

Often A Man Can Play The Helpless Child In Front Of A Woman, But He Can Almost Never Bring It Off When He Feels Most Like A Helpless Child.

The Loneliest Moment In Someone’s Life Is When They Are Watching Their Whole World Fall Apart, And All They Can Do Is Stare Blankly.

He Smiled Understandingly-much More Than Understandingly. It Was One Of Those Rare Smiles With A Quality Of Eternal Reassurance In It, That You May Come Across Four Or Five Times In Life. It Faced--or Seemed To Face--the Whole Eternal World For An Instant, And Then Concentrated On You With An Irresistible Prejudice In Your Favor. It Understood You Just As Far As You Wanted To Be Understood, Believed In You As You Would Like To Believe In Yourself, And Assured You That It Had Precisely The Impression Of You That, At Your Best, You Hoped To Convey.

Writing Is Eternal, For Therein The Dead Heart Liveth, The Clay-cold Tongue Is Eloquent, And The Quick Eye Of The Reader Is Cleared By The Reed Of The Scribe. As A Fossil In The Rock, Or A Coin In The Mortar Of A Ruin, So The Symbolled Thoughts Tell Of A Departed Soul: The Plastic Hand Hath Its Witness In A Statue, And Exactitude Of Vision In A Picture, And So, The Mind, That Was Among Us, In Its Writings Is Embalmed.

A Sudden Gust Of Rain Blew Over Them And Then Another - As If Small Liquid Clouds Were Bouncing Along The Land. Lightning Entered The Sea Far Off And The Air Blew Full Of Crackling Thunder. The Table Cloths Blew Around The Pillars. They Blew And Blew And Blew. The Flags Twisted Around The Red Chairs Like Live Things, The Banners Were Ragged, The Corners Of The Table Tore Off Through The Burbling Billowing Ends Of The Cloths.

My Generation Of Radicals And Breakers-down Never Found Anything To Take The Place Of The Old Virtues Of Work And Courage And The Old Graces Of Courtesy And Politeness.

I Was Enjoying Myself Now. I Had Taken Two Finger Bowls Of Champagne And The Scene Had Changed Before My Eyes Into Something Significant, Elemental And Profound.

This Is The Beauty I Want. Beauty Has Got To Be Astonishing, Astounding-- It's Got To Burst In On You Like A Dream, Like The Exquisite Eyes Of A Girl.

I'm A Romantic; A Sentimental Person Thinks Things Will Last, A Romantic Person Hopes Against Hope That They Won't.

Dishonesty In A Woman Is A Thing You Never Blame Deeply.

Great Gatsby Love

The Greatest Profound Pain Is Cased By, And Is The Result Of Our Own Illusions, Fantasies And Dreams.

She Wouldn't Let Go Of The Letter. She Took It Into The Tub With Her And Squeezed It Up In A Wet Ball, And Only Let Me Leave It In The Soap Dish When She Saw That It Was Coming To Pieces Like Snow.

There Was Even A Recurrent Idea In America About An Education That Would Leave Out History And The Past, That Should Be A Sort Of Equipment For Aerial Adventure, Weighed Down By None Of The Stowaways Of Inheritance Or Tradition.

There Is No Confusion Like The Confusion Of A Simple Mind.

What Was It Up There In The Song That Seemed To Be Calling Her Back Inside? What Would Happen Now In The Dim, Incalculable Hours?

The Montana Sunset Lay Between The Mountains Like A Giant Bruise From Which Darkened Arteries Spread Across A Poisoned Sky.

To Create Souls In Men, To Create Fine Happiness And Fine Despair She Must Remain Deeply Proud - Proud To Be Inviolate, Proud Also To Be Melting, To Be Passionate And Possessed.

His Hand Took Hold Of Hers, And As She Said Something Low In His Ear He Turned Toward Her With A Rush Of Emotion. I Think That Voice Held Him Most, With Its Fluctuating, Feverish Warmth, Because It Couldn’t Be Over-dreamed —that Voice Was A Deathless Song.

Your First Most Typical Figure In Any New Place Turns Out To Be A Bluff Or A Local Nuisance.

No Decent Career Was Ever Founded On A Public.

A Man's Social Rank Is Determined By The Amount Of Bread He Eats In A Sandwich.

I Don't Think He Was Ever Happy Unless Someone Was In Love With Him, Responding To Him Like Filings To A Magnet, Helping Him To Explain Himself, Promising Him Something. What It Was I Do Not Know. Perhaps They Promised That There Would Always Be Women In The World Who Would Spend Their Brightest, Freshest, Rarest Hours To Nurse And Protect That Superiority He Cherished In His Heart.

The Best Of America Drifts To Paris. The American In Paris Is The Best American.

Praise The Power That Hath Made And Preserved Us A Nation. Then Conquer We Must, For Our Cause It Is Just, And This Be Our Motto: "in God Is Our Trust." And The Star-spangled Banner Forever Shall Wave O'er The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave!

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