Key Quotes by Scott Fitzgerald

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

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.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

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.

It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.

Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.

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.

The pleasure we get from being fooled is as nothing compared to the mighty pleasure we get from fooling others.

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

You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.

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

Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

Key Quotes by Scott Fitzgerald part 2

Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Every one 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.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.

I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

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.

The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did. Precisely, and they are that which we know.

The general opinion of the human race is palpably on the side of the second applicant.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

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

There is a moment—Oh, just before the first kiss, a whispered word—something that makes it worth while.

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

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

The excess of sorrow laughs. Too much grief hath no laughter.

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in a state of becoming.

Gatsby looked at Daisy in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at.

Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.

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

We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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

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

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.

It takes two to make an accident.

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