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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Years Between Thirty-five

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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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.

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But I Always Felt That I'd Rather Be Provincial Hot-tamale Than Soup Without Seasoning.

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

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.

Life Is A Comedy For Those Who Think And A Tragedy For Those Who Feel. Show Me A Hero And I Will Write You A Tragedy.

She Was Beautiful - But Especially She Was Without Mercy.

He Was Resentful Against All Those In Authority Over Him, And This, Combined With A Lazy Indifference Toward His Work, Exasperated Every Master In School. He Grew Discouraged And Imagined Himself A Pariah; Took To Sulking In Corners And Reading After Lights. With A Dread Of Being Alone He Attached A Few Friends, But Since They Were Not Among The Elite Of The School, He Used Them Simply As Mirrors Of Himself, Audiences Before Which He Might Do That Posing Absolutely Essential To Him. He Was Unbearably Lonely, Desperately Unhappy.

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

So There Was Not An "i" Anymore - Not A Basis On Which I Could Organize My Self-respect - Save My Limitless Capacity For Toil That It Seemed I Possessed No More.

She Admired Him; She Was Used To Clutching Her Hands Together In His Wake And Heaving Audible Sighs.

It Was About Then [1920] That I Wrote A Line Which Certain People Will Not Let Me Forget: "she Was A Faded But Still Lovely Woman Of Twenty-seven."

She Was Incurably Dishonest.

And So With The Sunshine And The Great Bursts Of Leaves Growing On The Trees, Just As Things Grow In Fast Movies, I Had That Familiar Conviction That Life Was Beginning Over Again With The Summer.

His Was A Great Sin Who First Invented Consciousness. Let Us Lose It For A Few Hours.

Blessed Are The Dead That The Rain Falls On.

No Such Thing As A Man Willing To Be Honest - That Would Be Like A Blind Man Willing To See.

Every One Suspects Himself Of At Least One Of The Cardinal Virtues.

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For What It's Worth, It's Never Too Late To Be Whoever You Want To Be. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of And If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start Over.

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

He Looked At Her The Way All Women Want To Be Looked At By A Man.

And Will I Like Being Called A Jazz-baby? You Will Love It.

He Used To Think That He Wanted To Be Good, He Wanted To Be Kind, He Wanted To Be Brave And Wise, But It Was All Pretty Difficult. He Wanted To Be Loved, Too, If He Could Fit It In.

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

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.

It Was Strange To Have No Self-to Be Like A Little Boy Left Alone In A Big House, Who Knew That Now He Could Do Anything He Wanted To Do, But Found That There Was Nothing That He Wanted To Do.

I'm Restless. My Whole Generation Is Restless. I'm Sick Of A System Where The Richest Man Gets The Most Beautiful Girl If He Wants Her, Where The Artist Without An Income Has To Sell His Talents To A Button Manufacturer. Even If I Had No Talents I'd Not Be Content To Work Ten Years, Condemned Either To Celibacy Or A Furtive Indulgence, To Give Some Man's Son An Automobile.

In My Younger And More Vulnerable Years My Father Gave Me Some Advice That I've Been Turning Over In My Mind Ever Since.

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If That Was True He Must Have Felt That He Had Lost The Old Warm World, Paid A High Price For Living Too Long With A Single Dream.

Her Fine High Forehead Sloped Gently Up To Where Her Hair, Bordering It Like An Armorial Shield, Burst Into Lovelocks And Waves And Curlicues Of Ash Blonde And Gold. Her Eyes Were Bright, Big, Clear, Wet And Shining, The Colour Of Her Cheeks Was Real, Breaking Close To The Surface From The Strong Young Pump Of Her Heart. Her Body Hovered Delicately On The Last Edge Of Childhood -- She Was Almost Eighteen, Nearly Complete, But The Dew Was Still On Her.

And Yale Is November, Crisp And Energetic.

I Am Not A Great Man, But Sometimes I Think The Impersonal And Objective Equality Of My Talent And The Sacrifices Of It, In Pieces, To Preserve Its Essential Value Has Some Sort Of Epic Grandeur.

I Care Not Who Hoes The Lettuce Of My Country If I Can Eat The Salad!

First, He Realized That The Sea Was Blue And That There Was An Enormous Quantity Of It, And That It Roared And Roared-really All The Banalities About The Ocean That One Could Realize, But If Any One Had Told Him Then That These Things Were Banalities, He Would Have Gaped In Wonder.

Enormous Quantities

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

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

Great Gatsby Love

He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass.

Great Gatsby American Dream

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.

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.

People Try So Hard To Believe In Leaders Now, Pitifully Hard. But We No Sooner Get A Popular Reformer Or Politician Or Soldier Or Writer Or Philosopher -- A Roosevelt, A Tolstoi, A Wood, A Shaw, A Nietzsche, Than The Cross-currents Of Criticism Wash Him Away. My Lord, No Man Can Stand Prominence These Days. It's The Surest Path To Obscurity. People Get Sick Of Hearing The Same Name Over And Over.

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.

No Decent Career Was Ever Founded On A Public.

Men Don’t Often Know Those Times When A Girl Could Be Had For Nothing.

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

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

I Want To Tell You About Your Heart— You've Probably Been Neglecting Your Heart—and You Don’t Know.

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

You Can’t Repeat The Past.” “can’t Repeat The Past?” He Cried Incredulously. “why Of Course You Can!

Great Gatsby Love

Great Gatsby American Dream

Good Manners Are An Admission That Everybody Is So Tender That They Have To Be Handled With Gloves. Now, Human Respect—you Don't Call A Man A Coward Or A Liar Lightly, But If You Spend Your Life Sparing People's Feelings And Feeding Their Vanity, You Get So You Can't Distinguish What Should Be Respected In Them.

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.

It Is Invariably Saddening To Look Through New Eyes At Things Upon Which You Have Expended Your Own Powers Of Adjustment.

Great Gatsby Important

I Love Her And That's The Beginning And End Of Everything.

...one Emotion After Another Crept Into Her Face Like Objects Into A Slowly Developing Picture.

For The Moment I Can Only Cry Out That I Have Lost My Splendid Mirage. Come Back, Come Back, O Glittering And White!

I Couldn't Forgive Him Or Like Him, But I Saw That What He Had Done Was, To Him, Entirely Justified.

Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

All She Wanted Was To Be A Little Girl, To Be Efficiently Taken Care Of By Some Yielding Yet Superior Power, Stupider And Steadier Than Herself. It Seemed That The Only Lover She Had Ever Wanted Was A Lover In A Dream

The First Lights Of The Evening Were Springing Into Pale Existence. The Ferris Wheel, Pricked Out Now In Lights, Revolved Leisurely Through The Dusk; A Few Empty Cars Of The Roller Coaster Rattled Overhead.

You're A Slave, A Bound Helpless Slave To One Thing In The World, Your Imagination.

Gold? Yellow, Glittering, Precious Gold?... This Yellow Slave Will Knit And Break Religions, Bless Th' Accursed, Make The Hoar Leprosy Adored, Place Thieves, And Give Them Title, Knee And Approbation With Senators On The Bench.

Her Beautiful Eyes And Lips Were Very Grave As She Made Her Choice, And Anthony Thought Again How Naive Was Her Every Gesture; She Took All The Things Of Life For Hers To Choose From And Apportion, As Though She Were Continually Picking Out Presents For Herself From An Inexhaustible Counter.

Their Lips Brushed Like Young Wild Flowers In The Wind.

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Michael Rosenbaum

Olusegun Obasanjo

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