You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that our imagination can control our thoughts and actions, binding us to our own perceptions and dreams.
F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that our imagination can have a powerful hold over us, restricting our freedom and shaping our reality. It implies that while our imagination allows for creativity and potential, it can also become a slave master, dictating our emotions, decisions, and ultimately, our way of life. This duality highlights the significant role our inner thoughts play in determining our experiences and how we navigate the world.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage creativity in the workplace.
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 you live in New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish
LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem - a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
I learned that money can be a lot of things,It can be something that is hoarded, fought over, protected, stolen and withheld. Or it can be like an energy, fueled by the desire, will, creative interest, need to laugh, of large groups of people. And it can be shuffled and pushed around and pooled together to fuel a common interest, jokes about garbage, penises and parenthood.
We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.
The very attention given to finding out if the mind can be completely quiet is quietness.
To a longer and worse life, a shorter and better is by all means to be preferred.
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