F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

485 Sourced Quotes

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
No such thing as a man willing to be honest - that would be like a blind man willing to see.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.

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

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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
There are no second acts in American lives.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
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.

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter - it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?

F. Scott Fitzgerald
New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
For the moment I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage. Come back, come back, O glittering and white!

F. Scott Fitzgerald
In crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes

F. Scott Fitzgerald
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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
It was a marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
When she saw him face to face their eyes met and brushed like birds' wings. After that everything was all right, everything was wonderful, she knew that he was beginning to fall in love with her.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
You once liked me, didn't you?, he asked. LIKED you- I LOVED you. Everybody loved you. You could've had anybody you wanted for the asking.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Once we were one person, and always it will be a little that way.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
When a girl feels that she's perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That's charm

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression— yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarecly tolerated guest at a party she was giving.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Want any of this stuff? Jordan?... Nick?" I didn't answer. Nick?" he asked again. What?" Want any?" No... I just remembered that today's my birthday." I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafés in Mont Marte, where ivory women delved in romantic mysteries with diplomats and soldiers of fortune, while orchestras played Hungarian waltzes and the air was thick and exotic with intrigue and moonlight and adventure.

F. Scott Fitzgerald