Great Gatsby Gatsby Quotes

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.

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

I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.

People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away.

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

Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.

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

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

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

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

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.

All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.

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.

So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.

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

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 ---

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

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.

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

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.

Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply.

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.

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]

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

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

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

That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

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.

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.

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

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

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

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.

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.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

They're a rotten crowd', I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

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.

He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.

I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

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.

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.