Selfish people are in a way terribly capable of great loves.
Interpretation
Selfish individuals can still experience deep love despite their tendencies.
This quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that even those who are often perceived as selfish possess the capacity to love profoundly. It highlights the complexity of human emotions, indicating that selfishness does not preclude the ability to form deep and meaningful connections with others.
In practice
In a discussion about the duality of human nature and relationships.
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 think about being married again, having a home and a wife. No one can ever be married too many times, and maybe if I keep trying I'll get it right one day.
Indeed, among the lesser auxiliaries to success in love, an absence, the declining of an invitation to dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.
We live in an age, in an era where there is so much negativity, there is so much violence in the world, there is so much unrest and people are at war, that I wanted to promote the word love and red signifies love.
Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others.
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
How seamless seemed love and then came trouble!
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