WIST

In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
“Handle with Care,” Esquire (Mar 1936)

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. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
“The Crack-Up,” Esquire (Feb 1936)

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
(Attributed)

See also Hokekyo-Sho and this Spanish Proverb.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
Notebook E (ed. Edmund Wilson) (1945)

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pinprick, but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
Tender Is the Night, Bk. 3, ch. 13 (1934)

The victor belongs to the spoils.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
The Crack-Up (1936)

If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
The Crack-Up, “The Note-Books,” ed. Edmund Wilson (1945)

How strange to have failed as a social creature — even criminals do not fail that way — they are the law’s “Loyal Opposition,” so to speak. But the insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
Letter to daughter, Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald (Dec 1940)

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
Letter to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald (Jul 1938)

I never blame failure — there are too many complicated situations in life — but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
Letter, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945) p.302
Source text

About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
Letter, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945) p.303
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