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.
 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925). copy citation

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Author F. Scott Fitzgerald
Source The Great Gatsby
Topic drinking sobriety
Date 1925
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200041.txt

Context

“I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn't drink. 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. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all — and yet there's something in that voice of hers….
Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you — do you remember?” source

Meaning and analysis

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