Bright Young Things Quotes

“In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.”
― Anna Godbersen, Bright Young Things

“people are here to do reckless things, stupid things they might later regret, though the point of it all is in not regretting. For the idea of the party is youth.”
― Lucy Foley

“The Bright Young People. The press love and hate them - they celebrate them, they vilify them, and they know full well that they would not shift nearly so many papers without them.”
― Lucy Foley

“They lived in a world of destruction and fortuitous death. All was chance, and it was not even the Devil who threw the dice, for he was part of the fairy-tale and perished with it. It had hardly been worth while to pick a bone with it, for the only thing to quarrel with was one's own credulity in having ever believed a tale that broke down at so many points when put to the test. Year by year boys fresh from school joined in the dance of death, and sweltered in the reeking, stinking heat, when they should have been playing cricket or swimming in cool waters, and they got trench-fever and were gassed, and young limbs swift to run and ripe for love were gashed by bullets and sawn off in hospitals. The fate of the world rested on their shoulders: they were the bewildered scapegoats who were driven out into this desert of death, to expiate the criminal pride and folly of those who had been in charge of world-affairs while they were yet unbreeched. Save for rare moments of panic, they maintained a cheerful carelessness, a studied unconsciousness of the surrounding horror, for to think about it, to realize it and speak of it was to go mad. A few went mad, and with bandaged eyes awaited the volley they would never hear. The rest carried on, dumb and gallant, saying nothing, except in a few blurted words to a friend, of that smouldering focus of resentment and despair.”
― E.F. Benson, As We Are

“Everyone thinks I’m just a beautiful little fool … but I know a lot more than I am given credit for.”
― Olivia Horrox, Beautiful Little Fools