Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside. – F. Scott Fitzgerald