F. Scott Fitzgerald · 422 pages
Rating: (36.2K votes)
“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”
“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”
“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go”
“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”
“She was dazzling-- alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance.”
“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”
“It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.”
“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”
“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.”
“We all have souls of different ages”
“unloved women have no biographies-- they have histories”
“in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes”
“I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.”
“She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving herself”
“She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one - the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself.”
“Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost--something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here--”
“I learned a little of beauty-- enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth...”
“All I think of ever is that I love you.”
“And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it - but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.”
“There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal--”
“How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires.”
“A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty.”
“Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.”
“She was beautiful - but especially she was without mercy.”
“There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.”
“All she wanted was to be a little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream”
“Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.”
“Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances.”
“then, as though it had been waiting on a near by roof for their arrival, the moon came slanting suddenly through the vines and turned the girl's face the color of white roses.”
“Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us.”
“my grandmother has given me her own version of the precious gift: the most precious gift any teenager coul ask for:
MY GRANDMOTHER HAS GIVEN MY MY OWN SEX PLACE!!!!!”
“The thought of herself as decoration was absurd.”
“My business is hurting, too. Everyone on the street is in trouble. I never thought I would say this, but the world was a much better place when the Americans were still rich.”
“One tribe moves out and one tribe stays. History broadens, and philosophy shifts, develops a rift, splits one population from the other . . . and a schism happens, minor or major. It’s the way humankind has always proliferated. We go over the next hill, live a few hundred years, change our languages to accommodate things we never saw before—and before we know it, our cousins think we have an accent. Or we think they have a strange attitude. And we don’t really understand our cousins any longer.”
“¿Conoce esa sensación? Seguro que sí: tropezarse con un artista cuyo trabajo te habla tan directamente que es como si los dos compartieran el mismo lenguaje cómplice, y eso a la vez te reafirmara en lo que siempre has pensado y te dijera algo completamente nuevo. (...) ¿No la ha sentido, entonces?”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.