The Beautiful and Damned

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed--the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.

male--as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased.

He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals, she was always in a

Skye

mix-up--he had irritated her once and she had used toward him words that he had not thought were part of her vocabulary.

She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance--actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage.

His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should.

It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity,

she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.

There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully--assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.

It seemed to him that the essential element in these men at the top

was their faith that their affairs were the very core of life. All other things being equal, self-assurance and opportunism won out over technical knowledge;

In his moments of insecurity he was haunted by the suggestion that life might be, after all, significant.

life is so damned hard."

"it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever

Loving him not at all she grew sorry for him and kissed him sentimentally one night because he was so charming, a relic of a vanishing generation which lived a priggish and graceful illusion and was being replaced by less gallant fools. Afterward