Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
¶ Notebook E (ed. Edmund Wilson) (1945)
Quotations by ...
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pinprick, but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.
¶ Tender Is the Night, Bk. 3, ch. 13 (1934)
The victor belongs to the spoils.
¶ The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
¶ The Crack-Up (1936)
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. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
¶ The Crack-Up (1936)
If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.
¶ The Crack-Up, "The Note-Books," ed. Edmund Wilson (1945)
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.
¶ Letter to daughter, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald (Dec 1940)
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.
¶ Letter to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald (Jul 1938)
I never blame failure -- there are too many complicated situations in life -- but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.
¶ Letter, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945) p.302
Source text
About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move.
¶ Letter, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945) p.303
Source text
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WIST is my collection of quotations I find meaningful, moving, amusing (intended or not), well-phrased, and/or to which I just say I "Wish I'd Said That." But just because I quote it here doesn't mean I actually agree with it. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to
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