Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost--something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here--
Interpretation
This quote reflects the inevitability of change and the loss that accompanies it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the transient nature of experiences in life, suggesting that every step we take towards new beginnings comes with the remnants of what we leave behind. The essence of moments and connections cannot be completely recaptured, emphasizing the importance of cherishing the present while acknowledging the past.
In practice
In a farewell speech, one might say this quote to express the bittersweet feelings of leaving old memories behind.
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.
I know people can change-right down to my bones, through every cell, in every fiber of my body-I now that people can change. It is just a question of when and in what context.
If there's a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up!
If you don't have a real stake in the new, then just surviving on the old - even if it is about efficiency - I don't think is a long-term game.
We're never going to scare people into living more sustainably! We have to be able to demonstrate just how dynamic and aspirational such a world could be
Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well.
The biggest impediment to growth is in our minds and not in the world outside, and only constant in the world is change.
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