Flappers and Philosophers Quotes

“I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I hate dainty minds,' answered Marjorie. 'But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“You remind me of a smoked cigarette.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“we both fitted. If our corners were not rubbed off they were at least pulled in. But deep in us both was something that made us require more for happiness. I didn't know what I wanted”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“This is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding-- it's got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea--if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“What was it? Why won't you tell me?"
"I don't want to break down your illusions."
"My dear man, I have no illusions about you."
"I mean illusions about yourself.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I don't want to sound like Pollyanna," she began, "but you haven't grasped me yet. My courage is faith- faith in the eternal resilience of me- that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high and my eyes wide- not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often- and the female hell is deadlier than the male.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I'm merely trying to give you the sort of argument that would appeal to your intelligence.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“To be afraid, a person has either to be very great and strong-- or else a coward. I'm neither.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“Girls like you are responsible for all the tiresome colorless marriages; all those ghastly inefficiencies that pass as feminine qualities. What a blow it must be when a man with imagination marries the beautiful bundle of clothes that he's been building ideals around, and finds that she's just a weak, whining, cowardly mass of affectations!”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“When I want something bad enough, common sense tells me to go and take it--and not get caught.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“Oh, it doesn't get me. I'm pretty well cloistered, and I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“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.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“You see, when you were little they kept sending me snap–shots of you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful little girl with wondering, pure eyes—and I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me—even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a million things came up to me and said: 'Look here at me! See, I'm Life. You're turning your back on it!' All the way through that shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead of me, very frail and clear and wonderful.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“We're going through the black air with our arms wide and our feet straight out behind like a dolphin's tail, and we're going to think we'll never hit the silver down there till suddenly it'll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing waves.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“Her sigh was a benediction—an ecstatic surety that she was youth and beauty now as much as she would ever know. For another instant life was radiant and time a phantom and their strength eternal—then there was a bumping, scraping sound as the rowboat scraped alongside. Up”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I thought you weren't afraid." "I never am --but I won't throw my life away just to show one man I'm not.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“You seem to be bankrupt - morally as well as financially”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“My courage is faith—faith in the eternal resilience of me—that joy’ll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I’ve got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide—not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I’ve been through hell without a whine quite often—and the female hell is deadlier than the male.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“this is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding—it’s got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“No, no, it’s not me, it’s them—that old time that I’ve tried to have live in me. These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn’t have been ‘unknown’; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world—the dead South. You see,” she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, “people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I’ve always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren’t any disillusions comin’ to me. I’ve tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige—there’s just the last remnants of it, you know, like the roses of an old garden dying all round us—streaks of strange courtliness and chivalry in some of these boys an’ stories I used to hear from a Confederate soldier who lived next door, and a few old darkies. Oh, Harry, there was something, there was something! I couldn’t ever make you understand but it was there.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I'd feel I was... wastin' myself. There's two sides to me, you see. There's the sleepy old side you love; an' there's a sort of energy – the feelin' that makes me do wild things. That's the part of me that may be useful somewhere. that'll last when I'm not beautiful anymore.”
― Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“... I used to build dreams about you.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“Resignedly and with difficulty Tom removed the cigar—that is, he removed part of it, and then blew the remainder with a whut sound across the room, where it landed liquidly and limply in Mrs. Ahearn’s lap.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“That’s quite different. I told you I wouldn’t want to tie my life to any of the boys that are round Tarleton now, but I never made any sweepin’ generalities.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“I'm not sure what I'll do, but – well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
― Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“But, of course, you've either got to amuse people or feed 'em or shock 'em." Marjorie had culled this from Oscar Wilde.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers