F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

485 Sourced Quotes

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement—discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped form him - as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires....

F. Scott Fitzgerald
But there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
How the unforgettable faces of dusk would blend to her, the myriad footsteps, a thousand overtures, would blend to her footsteps; and there would be more drunkenness than wine in the softness of her eyes on his.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud - proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

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
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

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

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

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
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
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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
But he hated to be sober. It made him conscious of the people around him, of that air of struggle, of greedy ambition, of hope more sordid than despair, of incessant passage up or down…. There was kindliness about intoxication – there was the indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings

F. Scott Fitzgerald
So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
The change came a long way back, but at first it didn't show. The manner remains intact for some time after the morale cracks.

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

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

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald