I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the speaker's self-awareness and perceived rarity of honesty in others.
In this quote, F. Scott Fitzgerald expresses a profound sense of individuality and the rarity of honesty in the world. It suggests that the speaker feels distinctively truthful, highlighting the importance and value of honesty in personal character and relationships, while implying that many may not share this quality, creating a sense of isolation or exceptionalism.
In practice
Using the quote in a speech about the importance of integrity.
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.
Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."_x000D_ _x000D_ Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
Aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines.
He who affirms that Christianity makes men miserable, is himself an utter stranger to it.
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