Jay Gatsby Quotes

• I knew that when I kissed this girl, I would be forever wed to her.
• Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!
• You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.
• I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before.
• I’m p-paralysed with happiness.
• Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
• I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go, I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back.
• I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties, there isn’t any privacy.
• He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.
• You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.
• Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!
• I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.
• There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.
• 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 anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’
• I couldn’t sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams.
• His smile 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.

Best Quotes from Jay Gatsby

• 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.
• I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.
• There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
• Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.
• So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
• I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
• I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others – young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
• Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
• He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
• Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
• You can’t repeat the past.
• I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it – overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.
• His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own.
• Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

Famous Sayings

• They’re a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.
• He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.
• It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.
• I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.
• It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.
• The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.
• There was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.
• 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.
• It takes two to make an accident.
• When I said you were crazy, I was simply confused.
• Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time and you might pick up a nice bit of money.
• They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.
• I married him because I thought he was a gentleman, she said finally. I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.
• They’re such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.
• Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! shouted Mrs. Wilson. I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai——

FAQ Jay Gatsby Quotes

How does Daisy Buchanan describe her hopes for her daughter in “The Great Gatsby”?

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

What does Nick Carraway advise about judging others in “The Great Gatsby”?

“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.”

What commentary does Fitzgerald make about Tom and Daisy’s character through Nick’s observation?

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

How does Fitzgerald describe Gatsby’s persistent hope and vision regarding his life and Daisy?

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning—”

What tragic realization does Nick come to about Gatsby’s view of his relationship with Daisy?

“He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.”

How does Fitzgerald express the destructiveness of Daisy and Tom’s actions?

“It was all very careless and confused. They had smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

What is one of the key illusions that Gatsby maintains about his life and Daisy?

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.”

What does Daisy Buchanan express about her hopes for her daughter in “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald?

“That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

In “The Great Gatsby,” how does Nick Carraway summarize his reflections on Tom and Daisy’s actions?

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

What quote from “The Great Gatsby” encapsulates the central theme of the American Dream as envisioned by Gatsby’s love for Daisy?

“Gatsby looked at Daisy in a way that every young girl wanted to be looked at some time, and when he found what he was looking for, it was as if his dreams had finally sprinted to life.”