Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us.
Interpretation
Life combines both beautiful and painful experiences that affect everyone equally.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote reflects the dual nature of life, where joy and suffering coexist in a shared human experience. It suggests that regardless of our individual circumstances, everyone encounters the delightful and painful aspects of existence, highlighting the universal unpredictability and irony of life. This perspective encourages empathy and understanding, as we all navigate this complex journey together.
In practice
This quote could be used in a graduation speech to emphasize the unpredictability of 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.
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished.
I am more a teenager than anyone else I know. One minute I feel really adult and the next minute I say, 'Let's play hide-and-seek.'
People don't like it when you compare the miracle of childbirth to writing a book, but I think there is some overlap in the two because they are both pure agony.
The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.
Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you.
They keep coming up new all the time - things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and there's another right after. There are so many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to grow up. It keeps me busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what's right. It's a serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Marilla?
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