In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald · The Great Gatsby
Openings & first lines
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some…”
- Author
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Work
- The Great Gatsby
- Year
- 1925
- Chapter / part
- Chapter I
- Length
- 48 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #64317
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1925. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Related passages
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
This above all: to thine own self be true;And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.
In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to dancing and dress.
Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.
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