“Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.”

The 1st book I read in 2024 was ‘This side of Paradise’ by F. Scott. Fitzgerald. In his debut novel, Fitzgerald tells the story of Amory Blaine’s disillusionment as he wades through Princeton, the war, and many failed affairs. Entertaining, witty, and modern, it is hard to grasp that this was written over a 100 years ago.

Fitzgerald liberally spreads zingers all over the book. Some have a definite Oscar Wilde streak in them. Here are some of my favorites.

“…a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud.”
“but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.”
“Everything was hallowed by the haze of his own youth.”
“that the lack of money to do the things one wants to makes one quite prosy”
“at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 P.M.”
“He thought how much easier patriotism had been to a homogeneous race, how much easier it would have been to fight as the Colonies fought, or as the Confederacy fought.”
“She is one of those girls who need never make the slightest effort to have men fall in love with them. Two types of men seldom do: dull men are usually afraid of her cleverness and intellectual men are usually afraid of her beauty. All others are hers by natural prerogative.”
“Men don’t know how to be really angry or really happy—and the ones that do, go to pieces.”
“You might marry in haste and repent at leisure”
“I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”
“Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.”
“if being an idealist is both safe and lucrative, I might try it.”
“for in spite of going to college I’ve managed to pick up a good education.”
“Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories.”
“new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. . . .”