Gatsby quotes

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." The Great Gatsby Chapter 1, opening words.

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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 1, Nick on Gatsby.

[Tom] would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game. The Great Gatsby Chapter 1.

In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year....Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it. The Great Gatsby Chapter 1.

Civilization's going to pieces. I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things... The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be -- will be utterly submerged... It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things. The Great Gatsby Chapter 1, Tom.

All right...I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. The Great Gatsby Chapter 1, Daisy on her newborn girl.

I KNOW. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything…Sophisticated - God, I'm sophisticated. The Great Gatsby Chapter 1, Daisy.

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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 2.

He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive. The Great Gatsby Chapter 2, Tom, on Wilson and his wife Myrtle, with whom Tom is having an affair.

I married him because I thought he was a gentleman...I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe. The Great Gatsby Chapter 2, Myrtle on Wilson.

He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out...I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried...all afternoon. The Great Gatsby Chapter 2, Myrtle.

I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. 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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 2.

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited - they went there. The Great Gatsby Chapter 3.

I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library. The Great Gatsby Chapter 3.

It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too - didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect? The Great Gatsby Chapter 3.

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 external 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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 3, on Gatsby.

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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 3, Nick.

It takes two to make an accident. The Great Gatsby Chapter 3.

Everyone 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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 3, Nick on himself.

Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there....they shot him three times in the belly and drove away. The Great Gatsby Chapter 4.

I belong to another generation....You sit...and discuss your sports and your young ladies....As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won't impose myself on you any longer. The Great Gatsby Chapter 4.

A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired." The Great Gatsby Chapter 4.

Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes. The Great Gatsby Chapter 5.

Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry. The Great Gatsby Chapter 5.

It makes me sad because I've never seen such - such beautiful shirts before. The Great Gatsby Chapter 5.

If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay....You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock. The Great Gatsby Chapter 5.

One thing's sure and nothing's surer The rich get richer and the poor get - children. The Great Gatsby Chapter 5.

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. The Great Gatsby Chapter 5, Nick, on Gatsby's idealization of Daisy.

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. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. The Great Gatsby Chapter 6.

It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. The Great Gatsby Chapter 6.