Success Quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A hangover of the soul: Fitzgerald frames consciousness not as enlightenment but as a ruinous upgrade, the original wrongdoing that made pleasure complicated and desire self-aware. Calling it a "great sin" is slyly theological, but the theology is secular and modern: once you can narrate your own life, you can also judge it, compare it, watch it fail in real time. The line swerves from mock-blasphemy into a conspiratorial plea, the "let us" sounding like a toast shared among the over-educated and over-stimulated, people who know too much about themselves to be happy.

The intent isn't anti-intellectual so much as anti-self-surveillance. Fitzgerald is writing from inside a culture where class performance, romance, and ambition are all stage-lit; consciousness becomes that harsh spotlight. The subtext is that the Jazz Age fantasy of endless party is less about hedonism than about anesthesia. Alcohol, speed, flirtation, money, even romance: all tools to buy "a few hours" without the internal commentator.

Contextually, it fits Fitzgerald's recurring tension between glitter and dread. His characters chase transcendence but keep bumping into their own narration, their awareness of status, aging, and moral debt. The genius of the sentence is its compression: "invented" makes consciousness feel like a human-made technology with unintended consequences, and "few hours" admits the bleak truth. You don't escape; you rent oblivion, briefly, and then the bill arrives with interest.