Flappers and Philosophers

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—'I love you.'"

"And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life—not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things."

Most of us are content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both, and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attest to control one's destiny, is reserved for the fortunate or unfortunate few.

"Poor gauzy souls trying to express ourselves in something tangible. Marcia with her written book; I with my unwritten ones. Trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get— and being glad."

I suppose real sweetness is a sort of hardness—and strength."

Marjorie and her husband had one of those ultrasensitive, supercritical quarrels that couples never indulge in unless they care a great deal about each other.

Every one has seen such scenes on the stage—seen them so often that when they actually happen people behave very much like actors.