F. Scott Fitzgerald

“ Oh, you're so much a part, so much all of me...”
He closed his eyes.
“I'm so happy that I'm frightened. Wouldn't it be awful if this was—was the high point?...”
She looked at him dreamily.
“Beauty and love pass, I know.... Oh, there's sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses—”
“Beauty means the agony of sacrifice and the end of agony....”
“And, Amory, we're beautiful, I know. I'm sure God loves us—”
“He loves you. You're his most precious possession.”
“I'm not his, I'm yours. Amory, I belong to you. ”

“ CECELIA: Yes, you might as well get paid for the amount of acting you do.
ROSALIND: Sometimes when I've felt particularly radiant I've thought, why should this be wasted on one man?
CECELIA: Often when you're particularly sulky, I've wondered why it should all be wasted on just one family. (Getting up.) I think I'll go down and meet Mr. Amory Blaine. I like temperamental men.
ROSALIND: There aren't any. Men don't know how to be really angry or really happy—and the ones that do, go to pieces.
CECELIA: Well, I'm glad I don't have all your worries. I'm engaged. ”

“ They were at the head of the stairs, and as Amory turned into his room he thought he caught just the faintest cloud of discontent in her face. He lay awake in the darkness and wondered how much he cared—how much of his sudden unhappiness was hurt vanity—whether he was, after all, temperamentally unfitted for romance.
When he awoke, it was with a glad flood of consciousness. The early wind stirred the chintz curtains at the windows and he was idly puzzled not to be in his room at Princeton with his school football picture over the bureau and the Triangle Club on the wall opposite. ”

“ ROSALIND: Oh, be sure and do that—you're such a help.
(Exit CECELIA. ROSALIND finished her hair and rises, humming. She goes up to the mirror and starts to dance in front of it on the soft carpet. She watches not her feet, but her eyes—never casually but always intently, even when she smiles. The door suddenly opens and then slams behind AMORY, very cool and handsome as usual. He melts into instant confusion.)
HE: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought—
SHE: (Smiling radiantly) Oh, you're Amory Blaine, aren't you?
HE: (Regarding her closely) And you're Rosalind? ”

“ ROSALIND: Darling, I don't even do my own hair, usually.
AMORY: I'll do it for you.
ROSALIND: (Between a laugh and a sob) Thanks.
AMORY: Rosalind, you can't be thinking of marrying some one else. Tell me! You leave me in the dark. I can help you fight it out if you'll only tell me.
ROSALIND: It's just—us. We're pitiful, that's all. The very qualities I love you for are the ones that will always make you a failure.
AMORY: (Grimly) Go on.
ROSALIND: Oh—it is Dawson Ryder. He's so reliable, I almost feel that he'd be a—a background.
AMORY: You don't love him. ”

“ ROSALIND: So?
AMORY: Oh, yes—her name was Isabelle—nothing at all to her except what I read into her.
ROSALIND: What happened?
AMORY: Finally I convinced her that she was smarter than I was—then she threw me over. Said I was critical and impractical, you know.
ROSALIND: What do you mean impractical?
AMORY: Oh—drive a car, but can't change a tire.
ROSALIND: What are you going to do?
AMORY: Can't say—run for President, write—
ROSALIND: Greenwich Village?
AMORY: Good heavens, no—I said write—not drink.
ROSALIND: I like business men. Clever men are usually so homely. ”

“ Once he had been miraculously able to scent evil as a horse detects a broken bridge at night, but the man with the queer feet in Phoebe's room had diminished to the aura over Jill. His instinct perceived the fetidness of poverty, but no longer ferreted out the deeper evils in pride and sensuality.
There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes; Burne Holiday was sunk from sight as though he had never lived; Monsignor was dead. Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened eagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. ”

“ No—no—I'm taking the hardest course, the strongest course. Marrying you would be a failure and I never fail—if you don't stop walking up and down I'll scream!
(Again he sinks despairingly onto the lounge.)
AMORY: Come over here and kiss me.
ROSALIND: No.
AMORY: Don't you want to kiss me?
ROSALIND: To-night I want you to love me calmly and coolly.
AMORY: The beginning of the end.
ROSALIND: (With a burst of insight) Amory, you're young. I'm young. People excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating people like Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. ”

“ There at the head of the white platoon marched Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this year the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixty pounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and crimson lines.
Fascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast, the faces indistinct above the polo shirts, the voices blent in a paean of triumph—and then the procession passed through shadowy Campbell Arch, and the voices grew fainter as it wound eastward over the campus. ”

“ To the last farthing.”
“Well,” said Amory, “I simply state that I’m a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation—with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I’ve thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn’t a seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.” ”

“ Clara hesitated.
“Well, I can’t judge. A man, of course, has to go through a lot more, and I’ve been sheltered.”
“Oh, don’t stall, please, Clara,” Amory interrupted; “but do talk about me a little, won’t you?”
“Surely, I’d adore to.” She didn’t smile.
“That’s sweet of you. First answer some questions. Am I painfully conceited?”
“Well—no, you have tremendous vanity, but it’ll amuse the people who notice its preponderance.”
“I see.”
“You’re really humble at heart. You sink to the third hell of depression when you think you’ve been slighted. In fact, you haven’t much self-respect.” ”

“ Burne Holiday was so evidently developing—and Amory had considered that he was doing the same. He had fallen into a deep cynicism over what had crossed his path, plotted the imperfectability of man and read Shaw and Chesterton enough to keep his mind from the edges of decadence—now suddenly all his mental processes of the last year and a half seemed stale and futile—a petty consummation of himself... and like a sombre background lay that incident of the spring before, that filled half his nights with a dreary terror and made him unable to pray. ”

“ Rosalind!
ROSALIND: Oh, we’re so darned pitiful!
AMORY: Rosalind!
ROSALIND: Oh, I want to die!
AMORY: Rosalind, another night of this and I’ll go to pieces. You’ve been this way four days now. You’ve got to be more encouraging or I can’t work or eat or sleep. (He looks around helplessly as if searching for new words to clothe an old, shopworn phrase.) We’ll have to make a start. I like having to make a start together. (His forced hopefulness fades as he sees her unresponsive.) What’s the matter? (He gets up suddenly and starts to pace the floor.) It’s Dawson Ryder, that’s what it is. ”

“ A transcendent delight seemed to sparkle in every pool of water, for the moon had risen and the storm had scurried away into western Maryland. When Eleanor's arm touched his he felt his hands grow cold with deadly fear lest he should lose the shadow brush with which his imagination was painting wonders of her. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as ever he did when he walked with her—she was a feast and a folly and he wished it had been his destiny to sit forever on a haystack and see life through her green eyes. ”

“ Her breath came faster. “Can’t I kiss you, Isabelle—Isabelle?” Lips half parted, she turned her head to him in the dark. Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running footsteps surged toward them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up and turned on the light, and when the door opened and three boys, the wrathy and dance-craving Froggy among them, rushed in, he was turning over the magazines on the table, while she sat without moving, serene and unembarrassed, and even greeted them with a welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly, and she felt somehow as if she had been deprived. ”

“ The problem of evil had solidified for Amory into the problem of sex. He was beginning to identify evil with the strong phallic worship in Brooke and the early Wells. Inseparably linked with evil was beauty—beauty, still a constant rising tumult; soft in Eleanor’s voice, in an old song at night, rioting deliriously through life like superimposed waterfalls, half rhythm, half darkness. Amory knew that every time he had reached toward it longingly it had leered out at him with the grotesque face of evil. Beauty of great art, beauty of all joy, most of all the beauty of women. ”

“ ROSALIND: How did you know I was tired of Howard Gillespie?
MRS. CONNAGE: The poor boy looks so miserable every time he comes.
ROSALIND: That was one of those romantic, pre-battle affairs. They’re all wrong.
MRS. CONNAGE: (Her say said) At any rate, make us proud of you to-night.
ROSALIND: Don’t you think I’m beautiful?
MRS. CONNAGE: You know you are.
(From down-stairs is heard the moan of a violin being tuned, the roll of a drum. MRS. CONNAGE turns quickly to her daughter.)
MRS. CONNAGE: Come!
ROSALIND: One minute! ”

“ Monsignor called out the best that he had thought by question and suggestion, and Amory talked with an ingenious brilliance of a thousand impulses and desires and repulsions and faiths and fears. He and Monsignor held the floor, and the older man, with his less receptive, less accepting, yet certainly not colder mentality, seemed content to listen and bask in the mellow sunshine that played between these two. Monsignor gave the effect of sunlight to many people; Amory gave it in his youth and, to some extent, when he was very much older, but never again was it quite so mutually spontaneous. ”

“ Amory thought how it was only the past that ever seemed strange and unbelievable. The match went out.
“It’s black as pitch.”
“We’re just voices now,” murmured Eleanor, “little lonesome voices. Light another.”
“That was my last match.”
Suddenly he caught her in his arms.
“You are mine—you know you’re mine!” he cried wildly... the moonlight twisted in through the vines and listened... the fireflies hung upon their whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes.
THE END OF SUMMER
“No wind is stirring in the grass; not one wind stirs... ”

“ Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never love another living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth and brought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprised him, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to another creature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in those he went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which the girl became the mirror of a mood in him. Rosalind had drawn out what was more than passionate admiration; he had a deep, undying affection for Rosalind. ”

“ He remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in a great funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenly cleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow.
“I detest poor people,” thought Amory suddenly. “I hate them for being poor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it's rotten now. It's the ugliest thing in the world. It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor.” ”