Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from The Great Gatsby.
We love it when quotes help us encapsulate the major ideas, events, and personalities within a story. You can use these quotes as evidence when you write an essay. For example, to prove Nick Carraway was super jealous of Jay Gatsby, you've got to pinpoint the moments in the text when he's giving that evil side eye to his supposed pal. You can also use these quotes as study material to help you remember all the big events and the important details in the novel. Review quotes organized by Gatsby theme, chapter, or character to help streamline your learning.
Society and Class Quotes
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 parceled out unequally at birth...
Love Quotes
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—...
The American Dream Quotes
The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fif...
Wealth 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...
Memory and the Past Quotes
Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you – do you remember? – if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came i...
Dissatisfaction Quotes
Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. (1.6)
Isolation Quotes
Why they came East I don't know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. (1.16-17)
Mortality Quotes
It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent...
Marriage Quotes
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger."Look!" she complained. "I hurt it." We all looked – the knuckle was black and blue. "You did it, Tom," she sa...
Gender Quotes
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the To...
Lies and Deceit Quotes
"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." He didn't say any more, but we've always been...
Education Quotes
"About Gatsby! No, I haven’t. I said I’d been making a small investigation of his past.""And you found he was an Oxford man," said Jordan helpfully."An Oxford man!" He was incredulous. "Like he...
Compassion and Forgiveness Quotes
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into h...
Religion Quotes
"Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you,...