Month: September 2011

I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and determined to work them out in the younger ore and better veins of the mine—and I flatter myself (perhaps) that I have pretty well done so—and now the dross is coming.

George Gordon Noel Byron
George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824), British poet. Letter, January 18, 1823. Byron’s Letters and Journals, vol. 10, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (1973-1981).

Byron had earlier expressed the same sentiment to poet Thomas Moore, to whom he wrote (February 2, 1818): “I will work the mine of my youth to the last vein of the ore, and then—good night. I have lived, and am content.”

Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948), U.S. writer. quoted in Nancy Milford, Zelda, pt. 2, ch. 7 (1970). “The Beautiful and the Damned,” Tribune (New York, April 2, 1922).

review of F. Scott Fitzgerald. “On one page,” she elaborated, “I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage.”