F. scott fitzgerald quotes

I’m not sure what I’ll do, but— well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul. She is beautiful.

i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

It's not a slam at you when people are rude, it's a slam at the people they've met before.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and--and in love before they're born.

The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.

Don't forget who you are and where you come from.

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.

This is perhaps the best feeling in the world. I love going to sleep at night and wondering what weird and wonderful dreams I'm going to have however I always prolong sleep as long as possible, immeasurably happy simply listening to the sound of my fiancees breathing and feeling his arms around me. It's when you fall in love with these little things that you know you're truly in love.

I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.

She saw him the first day on board, and then her heart sank into her shoes as she realized at last how much she wanted him. No matter what his past was, no matter what he had done. Which was not to say that she would ever let him know, but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone she had ever met, that all other men seemed pale beside him.

Egyptian Proverb: The worst things: To be in bed and sleep not, To want for one who comes not, To try to please and please not.

Before you criticize others, remember, they may not have had the same opportunities in life as you have had

Think how you love me,' she whispered. 'I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember.' You'll always be like this to me.' Oh no; but promise me you'll remember.' Her tears were falling. 'I'll be different, but somewhere lost inside me there'll always be the person I am tonight.

Life is progressive, no matter what our intentions.

She wanted to crawl into his pocket and be safe forever.

A squalid phantasmagoria of breath

To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times, what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks but a special heart that listens.

Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.

She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.

You are mysterious, I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.

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

She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him.

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.

I'm a cynical idealist.

Having once found the intensity of art, nothing else that can happen in life can ever again seem as important as the creative process.

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.

...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

Forgotten is forgiven.

Hard to sit here and be close to you, and not kiss you.

Never confuse activity with action.

I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.

I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits.

good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handle with gloves.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

Happiness is the relief after extreme tension

Well, I can't describe her exactly-except to say that she was beautiful. She was-tremendously alive.

For what it's worth, it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of and if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over.

The world is always curious, and people become valuable merely for their inaccessibility

One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.

Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives. Yet from this fog his affection emerged--the best contacts are when one knows the obstacles and still wants to preserve a relation.

How different it all was from what you'd planned.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.

I never blame failure - there are too many complicated situations in life - but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

It's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.

A love affair is like a short story--it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning was easy, the middle might drag, invaded by commonplace, but the end, instead of being decisive and well knit with that element of revelatory surprise as a well-written story should be, it usually dissipated in a succession of messy and humiliating anticlimaxes.

I used to build dreams about you.

There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.

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

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now - isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once-but I loved you too." Gatsby's eyes opened and closed. "You loved me too?" he repeated. "Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive. Why - there're things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget."

Courage to me means ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life-not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things...My courage is faith-faith in the eternal resilience of me-that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does, I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide

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

The sign of intelligence is the ability to carry opposed thoughts at the same time.

You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.

The greatest profound pain is cased by, and is the result of our own illusions, fantasies and dreams.

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

When I'm with you, I don't breathe quite right.

I might have enjoyed the company of a woman or two... Or three but that had never stopped me from loving you.

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go

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

The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

It is not merely enough to have the ability to be persistant, you must also have the ability to start over.

And in the end, we were all just humans...Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

You have a place in my heart no one else ever could have.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.

You remind me of a smoked cigarette.

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

The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.

The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.

Intelligence is measured by a person's ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it - but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.

in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

No matter how low you go, there's always an unexplored basement.

When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

So we'll just let things take their course, and never be sorry.

It is not life that's complicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life.

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.

I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything.

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.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.

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.

There's no substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when you don't feel it at all.

You seem to take things so personally, hating people and worshipping them--always thinking people are so important--especially yourselves. You just ask to be kicked around. I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it--on the inside.

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

Don't let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your "personality," as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p.m.

A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms.

Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable… .

Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

The ability to hold two competing thoughts in one's mind and still be able to function is the mark of a superior mind

I am tired of knowing nothing and being reminded of it all the time.

The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.

You'll find another.' God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.

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

We all have souls of different ages