F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

On alcohol: "It`s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don`t see or care."

On belief: "At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide."

On Age and Aging in your Twenties: "One of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax."

On California and the West: "Only remember-west of the Mississippi it`s a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk."

On Despair: "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o`clock in the morning, day after day."

On Free Will: "The man who arrives young believes that he exercises his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thirty has a balanced idea of what will power and fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will alone."

"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."

"A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big."

"Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over."

"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."

"No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there."

"Grow up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to ship it and go from one childhood to another."

(on Joan Crawford) Why do her lips have to be glistening wet? I don`t like her smiling to herself. Her cynical accepting smile has gotten a little tired. She can not fake her bluff.

(on Errol Flynn) He seemed very nice though rather silly and fatuous.

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; At 45 they are caves in which we hide.

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.

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o`clock in the morning, day after day.

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.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

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.