The Beautiful and Damned (Modern Library Classics)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery.

“Don’t say ‘wife.’ I’m your mistress. Wife’s such an ugly word. Your ‘permanent mistress’ is so much more tangible and desirable.…

She knew that in her breast she had never wanted children. The reality, the earthiness, the intolerable sentiment of child-bearing, the menace to her beauty—had appalled her. She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving itself.

It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.

illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.

Debatable?

“The failure and the success both believe in their hearts that they have accurately balanced points of view, the success because he’s succeeded, and the failure because he’s failed. The successful man tells his son to profit by his father’s good fortune, and the failure tells his son to profit by his father’s mistakes.”

‘This Side of Paradise.’

Lol. Self-deprecating much?