The Great Gatsby Quotes
A one-stop shop for all quotes Gatsby: flappers, bootleggers, and wild parties galore.
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The Great Gatsby Quotes
Jay Gatsby sure knew how to throw a party—and some pretty famous lines. Click on any The Great Gatsby quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. Looking for even more quotes from The Great Gatsby? Head on over to our Learning Guide for loads of in-depth analysis and close-readings of quotes.
"A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American"Source: The Great Gatsby | Speaker: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their irises are one yard high"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"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."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You can't live forever; you can't live forever."Source: The Great Gatsby | Speaker: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald