F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

484 Sourced Quotes

Talk English to me, Tommy. Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole. But the meanings are different— in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. That gives me an advantage.

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald
There was even a recurrent idea in America about an education that would leave out history and the past, that should be a sort of equipment for aerial adventure, weighed down by none of the stowaways of inheritance or tradition.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently an knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
She was a dark, unenduring little flower - yet he thought he detected in her some quality of spiritual reticence, of strength drawn from her passive acceptance of all things. In this he was mistaken.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I'm merely trying to give you the sort of argument that would appeal to your intelligence.

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
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
He was going to live in New York, and be known at every restaurant and café, wearing a dress suit from early evening to early morning, sleeping away the dull hours of the forenoon.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up in a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.

F. Scott Fitzgerald