We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical ill-considered criticism.

It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.

he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.

He dispensed starlight to casual moths.

I talk with the authority of failure - Ernest with the authority of success. We could never sit across the same table again.