I have no more virtues to lose. Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtues … . —Becoming mostly insincere—calling myself “not such a bad fellow,” thinking that I regreted my lost youth when I envied the delights of losing it. Youth is like a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn’t want to repeat her girlhood—she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.

From “This Side of Paradise” by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

With his refined style, Francis Scott Fitzgerald gives a terrific analogy between youth and a big plate of candy.  I did not realize this aspect of our development until I wrote “The Stranger’s Enigma,” and saw how our evolution to become grownups involves losing not only our innocence but also other virtues. We are more prone to gain new bad habits and vices from others than to learn virtues from them.  With his characteristic perspicacity and the tremendous power of his prose, Francis Scott Fitzgerald summarizes this human weakness in a few words: “I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”