Great Gatsby Nick Quotes

the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

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

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

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.

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 felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.

I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

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

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

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.

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.