F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes - page 16

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short story writer, considered one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. His works, including "The Great Gatsby," captured the spirit of the Jazz Age and explored themes of wealth, love, and the American Dream. He remains a defining voice of his generation and an enduring influence on modern literature. Here are 480 of his quotes:

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief-that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jim Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to make him an appealing character, I feel that it would be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the land of the Jelly-beans well below the Mason-Dixon line.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

That Kitty was capable of any deep grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to think of her as something unapproachable and callous. She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a picture flashed before him - of Kitty's arms around some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty's lips pressed close to other lips in what was surely: passion.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

There is a sort of waking nightmare that sets in sometimes when one has missed a sleep or two, a feeling that comes with extreme fatigue and a new sun, that the quality of the life around has changed. It is a fully articulate conviction that somehow the existence one is then leading is a branch shoot of life and is related to life only as a moving picture or a mirror - that the people, and streets, and houses are only projections from a very dim and chaotic past.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The truth is that the public has done one of those startling and amazing things that they do about once in a hundred years. They've seized an idea.” "What is it?” "That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was no affair for the watch: Satan was at large tonight and Satan seemed to be he who appeared dimly in front, heel over gate, knee over fence. Moreover, the adversary was obviously travelling near home or at least in that section of London consecrated to his coarser whims, for the street narrowed like a road in a picture and the houses bent over further and further, cooping in natural ambushes suitable for murder and its histrionic sister, sudden death.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

There had been a war fought and won and the great city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white, red, and rose.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I hate the place like poison with a sincere hatred.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him - he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Those were the days of "Florodora" and of sextets, of pinched-in waists and blown-out sleeves, of almost bustles and absolute ballet skirts, but here, without doubt, disguised as she might be by the unaccustomed stiffness and old fashion of her costume, was a butterfly of butterflies. Here was the gayety of the period - the soft wine of eyes, the songs that flurried hearts, the toasts and tie bouquets, the dances and the dinners. Here was a Venus of the hansom, cab, the Gibson girl in her glorious prime. Here was...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

John T. Unger came from a family that had been well known in Hades - a small town on the Mississippi River - for several generations.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter... And the rain and over the fields a voice calling...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shatters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Of this story I can say that it came to me in an irresistible form, crying to be written. It will be accused perhaps of being a mere piece of sentimentality, but, as I saw it, it was a great deal more. If, therefore, it lacks the ring of sincerity, or even, of tragedy, the fault rests not with the theme but with my handling of it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular - I am idling, I have idled, I will idle.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Only remember west of the Mississippi it's a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

He doesn't believe that public swimming-pools and a kind word in time will right the wrongs of the world; moreover, he takes a drink whenever he feels like it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered the most brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things and all that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting, and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book, or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, the more spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they pay you, the more the people buy the issue.

F. Scott Fitzgerald