Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.

and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I

Let us learn how to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead' he suggested, 'After that my own rule is to let everything alone'.

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—'I love you.

A woman never knows what a good man she's got till after she turns him down.

Oh, Clara!' Amory said; 'what a devil you could have been if the Lord had just bent your soul a little the other way!

you mustn't confuse a single failure with a final defeat.

When a girl comes out, she needs all the attention.

Every man's insomnia is as different from his neighbor's as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.

My thu-umb!" explained Julie. "Oh-h-h-h, t'urts.

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five. No, he didn't--he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle--there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.

Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands.

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 hands.

For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.

Ce qu'il attendait de Daisy? Qu'elle aille trouver Tom et lui dise: Je ne t'ai jamais aimé. Rien de moins. Ayant ainsi, d'une seule phrase, réduit trois années de sa vie à néant.

Well, Rosalind has still to meet the man she can't outdistance. Honestly, Alec, she treats men terribly. She abuses them and cuts them and breaks dates with them and yawns in their faces--and they come back for more. They love it. They hate it. She's a--she's a sort of vampire, I think--and she can make girls do what she wants usually--only she hates girls.

We all have souls of different ages.

You were brought up to work — not especially to marry. Now you've found your first nut to crack and it's a good nut — go ahead and put whatever happens down to experience. Wound yourself or him — whatever happens it can't spoil you because economically you're a boy, not a girl.

molti tipi curiosi e reso vittima di non pochi inveterati scocciatori.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away.

I don't like innuendo in these deafening English whispers.

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

Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything.