Great Gatsby Important Quotes:

Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

topic: Past, Great Gatsby Important, Great Gatsby Gatsby, Great Gatsby Nick Carraway

Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2003). “The Great Gatsby”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

topic: Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Important, Great Gatsby Gatsby, Serfs

A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 1 (1925)

topic: Fundamentals, Birth, Great Gatsby Important, Great Gatsby Nick, Great Gatsby Nick Carraway

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925)

topic: Dream, Green Lights, Docks, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was ....

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Confused, Past, Ideas, Gatsby Love, Great Gatsby Gatsby

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 3 (1925)

topic: Honesty, People, Virtue, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Gatsby

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

Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.29, Atlântico Press

topic: Life, Cities, Yellow, City Of Ashes, Darkening

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

I'm inclined to reserve all judgement, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2002). “F. Scott Fitzgerald: Trimalchio: An Early Version of 'The Great Gatsby'”, p.5, Cambridge University Press

topic: Grief, College, Men, Reserves, Great Gatsby Important

I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Echoes of the Jazz Age Collection: The Beautiful and Damned, Winter Dreams, The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and many more”, p.480, e-artnow

topic: Father, Missing, Fundamentals, Great Gatsby Important, Great Gatsby Nick

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.

- 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.110, e-artnow

topic: Forgiving, Done, Saws, Carelessness, Careless

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

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

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Tired, Busy, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Gatsby

For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925)

topic: Men, Lasts, Faces, Gatsby Love, Great Gatsby American Dream

One thin's sure and nothing's surer The rich get richer and the poor get — children. In the meantime, In between time...

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Time, Children, Rich, Riches And Poors, Great Gatsby Book

Feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Book House (2016). “F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Complete Novels (Book House)”, p.383, Book House

topic: Remember, Great Gatsby Love, Great Father, Great Literature, Gatsby Love

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925)

topic: Stories, Jordan, West, Great Gatsby Important

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

It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful shirts before.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Beautiful, Shirts, Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Important

I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. [- Nick Carroway]

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925)

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

You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Trying, Forget, Stranger, Sad Things, Great Gatsby Book

He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Believe, Quality, Prejudice, Reassurance, Great Gatsby Book

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Philosophy, Enchanted, Variety, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Gatsby

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Thankful, Attitude, Kindness, Jazz Age, Great Literature

At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others -- poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner -- young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

- 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.40, e-artnow

topic: Loneliness, Twilight, Night, Feeling Lonely, Poignant

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

It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Eye, Looks, Saddening, New Eyes, Great Gatsby Important

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: Source: www.mirror.co.uk

topic: Father, Years, Advice, Great Literature, Great Father

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

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

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

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

I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Book, Drunk, Library, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Gatsby

but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2003). “The Great Gatsby”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

topic: Football, Games, Forever, Great Gatsby Important, Turbulence

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registered earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 1 (1925)

topic: Successful, Earthquakes, Personality, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Important

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

source: The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925)

topic: Confused, People, Confusion, Carelessness, Careless