4 F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes on Youth

F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes on youth

30. In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.

31. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows. This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch-not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward-a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.

62. Thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

85. The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense, one stays young.