100+ Great Gatsby American Dream Quotes

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby: The Authentic Edition from Fitzgerald’s Original Publisher: The authentic edition from Fitzgerald’s original publisher”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

topic: Dream, Long, World, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “(The Great Gatsby)”, p.57, F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Dream, Passion, Heart, Creative Passion, Gatsby Love

I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Inspirational, Beautiful, Girl, Assonance, Gatsby Love

He must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: "The Great Gatsby". Book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chapter 8, 1925.

topic: Dream, Real, Sky, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... And one fine morning ---

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: Great Gatsby (1925) ch. 9

topic: Running, Morning, Years, Great Literature, Old Money

You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.83, Oldcastle Books

topic: Great Gatsby American Dream

Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925).

topic: Great Literature, Old Money, Gatsby Love, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book

Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Cute, Friendship, Men, Great Literary, Great Gatsby American Dream

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 1 (1925)

topic: Dream, Men, Dust, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Inspirational, Time, Powerful, Jazz Age, Great Literature

What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Years, Afternoon, Next, So Confused, Verge

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 6 (1925)

topic: Father, Mean, Son, Platonic, Long Island

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 6 (1925)

topic: Girl, Forever, Mind, Literary Love, Gatsby Love

...I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2003). “The Great Gatsby”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

topic: Eye, Thinking, House, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Gatsby

I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.81, e-artnow

topic: Wife, Making Love, Great Gatsby Love, Gatsby Love, Great Gatsby American Dream

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Love, Heart, Men, Freshness, Gatsby Love

This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Book House (2016). “F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Complete Novels (Book House)”, p.393, Book House

topic: Moving, Men, Garden, Swarms, Great Gatsby American Dream

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Successful, Personality, Unbroken, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book

he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.