F. Scott Fitzgerald idézet

oldal 13

„Szeretem a nagy partikat. Olyan meghittek. A kis partikon nincs magánélet.”

„... és egy pillanatra azt hittem, hogy szeretem. De lassan gondolkodó vagyok, és tele vagyok belső szabályokkal, amelyek fékként hatnak a vágyaimra.”

„Valahányszor kedved van kritizálni valakit ... ne feledd, hogy a világon nem minden embernek voltak olyan előnyei, mint neked.”

„Amit elveszítünk, az sokkal édesebbnek tűnik utólag. Tudom, hogy így van, mert egyszer nagyon akartam valamit, és meg is szereztem. Ez volt az egyetlen dolog, amit igazán akartam életemben... aztán, amikor az enyém lett, porrá omlott a kezeim között... és ebből megtanultam, hogy az ember nem szerezhet meg magának semmit, egyáltalán semmit. Mert a vágyaink becsapnak.”

„Néha kísérteties magányt éreztem, másokban is - fiatal hivatalnokokban alkonyatkor, az éjszaka és az élet legmegragadóbb pillanatait pazarolva.”

„Semmilyen tűz vagy frissesség nem támadhatja meg azt, amit az ember elraktároz a kísérteties szívében.”

„Az írók nem igazán emberek. Vagy, ha valamennyire is jók, akkor ők egy csomó ember, akik nagyon is próbálnak egy ember lenni.”

„Szeretem az embereket, és szeretem, ha kedvelnek, de a szívemet ott hordom, ahová Isten tette, legbelül.”

„Nagy előny, ha nem iszol keményen ivó emberek között.”

„Mindenki feltételezi magáról, hogy legalább egy sarkalatos erényt birtokol, és ez az enyém: Azon kevés őszinte emberek egyike vagyok, akiket valaha is ismertem.”

„Az ősszel együtt az élet is újra kezdődik.”

„Igyunk az alkoholra, az élet rózsaszín szemüvegére.”

„Egyszerre voltam belül és kívül, egyszerre bűvölt el és taszított el az élet kimeríthetetlen sokszínűsége.”

„És így, a napsütéssel és a fákon növekvő nagy levelekkel, az az ismerős meggyőződésem támadt, hogy a nyárral az élet újra kezdődik.”

„Mindenféle szeretet létezik ezen a világon, de soha nem létezhet ugyanaz a szerelem kétszer.”

„Az ítéletek fenntartása végtelen remény kérdése.”

„Az új barátok gyakran jobban elvannak, mint a régi barátok.”

„Mindig a válásról álmodott, soha nem a létezésről.”

„Valójában nem voltam szerelmes, de egyfajta gyengéd kíváncsiságot éreztem.”

„Tehát tovább verünk , csónakok az áramlat ellen, szüntelenül visszavisszük a múltba”

„Ez része az egész irodalom szépségének. Felfedezed, hogy vágyaid egyetemes vágyakozások, hogy nem vagy magányos és elszigetelt senkitől. Hozzátartozzol.”

„Van egy pillanat - közvetlenül az első csók előtt, egy suttogott szó -, ami miatt mindez megéri.”

„Nem akarok újra ártatlan lenni. De újra át szeretném élni az ártatlanságom elevesztése örömét.”

„Hagyjad ki ezeket a felkiáltójeleket. A felkiáltójel olyan, mintha a saját vicceden nevetnél.”

„Már vagy egy hete részeg vagyok, és gondoltam, talán kijózanít, ha beülök egy könyvtárba.”

„Nem lehet megismételni a múltat? Dehogynem lehet!”

„Csak üldözöttek, üldözők, elfoglaltak és fáradtak léteznek.”

„Cinikus idealista vagyok.”

„Egy nőnek képesnek kell lennie arra, hogy szépen és romantikusan megcsókoljon egy férfit anélkül, hogy a felesége vagy a szeretője akarna lenni.”

„Nincs olyan zűrzavar, mint az egyszerű elme zűrzavara...”

„Az érzelmeim rabja vagyok, a tetszéseimé, az unalom iránti gyűlöletemé, a legtöbb vágyamé.”

„Mutass nekem egy hőst, és én írok neked egy tragédiát.”

„Egy balesethez ketten kellenek.”

„Dühösen, félig szerelmes voltam belé, és rettenetesen sajnáltam, ezért elfordultam.”

„Rohadt egy társaság - kiabáltam a gyepen keresztül. "Te annyit érsz, mint az egész rohadt banda együttvéve."”

„Így hát tovább hajtottunk a halál felé a hűlő szürkületben.”

„Kék kertjeiben a férfiak és a lányok úgy jöttek és mentek, mint a lepkék a suttogások, a pezsgő és a csillagok között.”

„Csak arra tudtam gondolni, újra és újra, hogy "Nem élhetsz örökké, nem élhetsz örökké".”

„Ha a személyiség sikeres gesztusok töretlen sorozata, akkor viszont volt benne valami pompás.”

„Tudni akarom, hogy ugyanabban a világban mozogtál és lélegeztél mint én.”

„Igazából ez az én titkom - nem beszélhetek rólad senkinek, mert nem akarom, hogy még több ember megtudja, milyen csodálatos vagy.”

„Előfordult már, hogy várta az év leghosszabb napját, és aztán lemaradt róla? Mindig várom az év leghosszabb napját, és aztán lekésem!”

“This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the "Smart Set" in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern — a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.”

“To Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed — it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth — yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams.”

“It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.”

“There's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate.”

“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, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.”

“The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?”

“Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:”

“Jim Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to make him an appealing character, I feel that it would be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the land of the Jelly-beans well below the Mason-Dixon line.”

“Isn’t Hollywood a dump — in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.”

“He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.”

“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.”

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

“The victor belongs to the spoils.”

“Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.”

“Look here, old sport, […] what's your opinion of me, anyhow?' A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.”

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

“And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he has passed….”

“That Kitty was capable of any deep grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to think of her as something unapproachable and callous. She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a picture flashed before him — of Kitty's arms around some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty's lips pressed close to other lips in what was surely: passion.”

“There is a sort of waking nightmare that sets in sometimes when one has missed a sleep or two, a feeling that comes with extreme fatigue and a new sun, that the quality of the life around has changed. It is a fully articulate conviction that somehow the existence one is then leading is a branch shoot of life and is related to life only as a moving picture or a mirror — that the people, and streets, and houses are only projections from a very dim and chaotic past.”

“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.”

“The truth is that the public has done one of those startling and amazing things that they do about once in a hundred years. They’ve seized an idea.”
“What is it?”
“That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.”

“It was no affair for the watch: Satan was at large tonight and Satan seemed to be he who appeared dimly in front, heel over gate, knee over fence. Moreover, the adversary was obviously travelling near home or at least in that section of London consecrated to his coarser whims, for the street narrowed like a road in a picture and the houses bent over further and further, cooping in natural ambushes suitable for murder and its histrionic sister, sudden death.”

“He stretched his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. "I know myself," he cried, "but that is all — "”

“There had been a war fought and won and the great city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white, red, and rose.”

“The shadow of a dove
Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;
And down the valley through the crying trees
The body of the darker storm flies; brings
With its new air the breath of sunken seas
And slender tenuous thunder...
But I wait...
Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain —
Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,
Happier winds that pile her hair;
Again
They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air
Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.”

“In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.”