The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.
Interpretation
Early success can lead to a romanticized view of life, keeping one youthful in spirit.
In this quote, Fitzgerald suggests that achieving success at a young age may result in a naive or idealistic perspective on life. This sense of romance fuels a youthful outlook, implying that the innocence and enthusiasm of youth can be maintained through the belief that life is filled with adventure and possibility.
In practice
During a commencement speech to celebrate achieving dreams early in life.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.
Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of stargazers, there would have been no gifts.
I don't underrate the value of military knowledge, but if men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.
It's not possible to have a problem without believing a prior thought. To notice this simple truth is the beginning of peace.
Plants grow most in the darkest hours preceding dawn; so do human souls. Nature always pays for a brave fight. Sometimes she pays in strengthened moral muscle, sometimes in deepened spiritual insight, sometimes in a broadening, mellowing, sweetening of the fibres of character,βbut she always pays.
Enlightenment is not an attainment; it is a realization. And when you wake up, everything changes and nothing changes. If a blind man realizes that he can see, has the world changed?
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