Learn young about hard work and manners - and you'll be through the whole dirty mess and nicely dead again before you know it.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of learning hard work and manners early in life to navigate challenges gracefully.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote highlights the significance of instilling values such as hard work and good manners from a young age. By doing so, individuals can effectively manage life's challenges and complexities, ensuring a smoother journey through life's inevitable ups and downs, ultimately leading to a sense of fulfillment and peace as one approaches the end of life.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a graduation speech to emphasize the importance of foundational values.
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.
May God us keep From Single vision and Newton's sleep.
There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them.
There is moderation in everything.
'There are no easy pickings.' That would be a more accurate, less dramatic statement than 'There's no such thing as a free lunch.'
People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works.
You can't afford to hop around and act like a kid when you have to get back on defense and worry about the other parts of the game. But at the end, when the buzzer sounds, you have the luxury of hopping around and looking foolish for a while.
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