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The Men--the Undergraduates Of Yale And Princeton Are Cleaner, Healthier, Better-looking, Better Dressed, Wealthier And More Attractive Than Any Undergraduate Body In The Country.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Men--the Undergraduates Of

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Men--the Undergraduates Of Yale And Princeton Are Cleaner, Healthier, Better-looking, Better Dressed, Wealthier And More Attractive Than Any Undergraduate Body In The Country.

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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 - To-morrow We Will Run Faster, Stretch Out Our Arms Farther ... And One Fine Morning ---

The Victor Belongs To The Spoils.

I'm Merely Trying To Give You The Sort Of Argument That Would Appeal To Your Intelligence.

So When The Blue Smoke Of Brittle Leaves Was In The Air And The Wind Blew The Wet Laundry Stiff On The Line I Decided To Come Back Home.

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.

Before You Criticize Others, Remember, They May Not Have Had The Same Opportunities In Life As You Have Had

They Were Smiling At Each Other As If This Was The Beginning Of The World.

His Hand Took Hold Of Hers, And As She Said Something Low In His Ear He Turned Toward Her With A Rush Of Emotion. I Think That Voice Held Him Most, With Its Fluctuating, Feverish Warmth, Because It Couldn’t Be Over-dreamed —that Voice Was A Deathless Song.

You're Not Sorry To Go, Of Course. With People Like Us Our Home Is Where We Are Not... No One Person In The World Is Necessary To You Or To Me.

Love Is Fragile -- She Was Thinking -- But Perhaps The Pieces Are Saved, The Things That Hovered On Lips, That Might Have Been Said. The New Love-words, The Tenderness Learned, And Treasured Up For The Next Lover.

...their Eyes Are Full Of Kindness As Each Feels The Full Effect Of Novelty After A Short Separation. They Are Drawing A Relaxation From Each Other's Presence, A New Serenity.

Though The Jazz Age Continued It Became Less And Less An Affair Of Youth. The Sequel Was Like A Children's Party Taken Over By The Elders.

Young People Do Not Perceive At Once That The Giver Of Wounds Is The Enemy And The Quoted Tattle Merely The Arrow.

The Things That'll Make You Fail I'll Love Always.

It Understood You Just As Far As You Wanted To Be Understood, Believed In You As You Would Like To Believe In Yourself, And Assured You That It Had Precisely The Impression Of You That, At Your Best, You Hoped To Convey.

Great Gatsby Book

Very Strong Personalities Must Confine Themselves In Mutual Conversation To Very Gentle Subjects.

She’s Got An Indiscreet Voice,” I Remarked. “it’s Full Of-“ I Hesitated. “her Voice Is Full Of Money,” He Said Suddenly. That Was It. I’d Never Understood Before. It Was Full Of Money-that Was The Inexhaustible Charm That Rose And Fell In It, The Jingle Of It, The Cymbals’ Song Of It.

I Can’t Exactly Describe How I Feel But It’s Not Quite Right. And It Leaves Me Cold.

Grown Up, And That Is A Terribly Hard Thing To Do. It Is Much Easier To Skip It And Go From One Childhood To Another.

Trouble Has No Necessary Connection With Discouragement. Discouragement Has A Germ Of Its Own, As Different From Trouble As Arthritis Is Different From A Stiff Joint.

It’s Just That I Feel So Sad These Wonderful Nights. I Sort Of Feel They’re Never Coming Again, And I’m Not Really Getting All I Could Out Of Them.

I Didn't Realize It, But The Days Came Along One After Another, And Then Two Years Were Gone, And Everything Was Gone, And I Was Gone.

Beauty Is Only To Be Admired, Only To Be Loved - To Be Harvested Carefully And Then Flung At A Chosen Lover Like A Gift Of Roses. It Seems To Me, So Far As I Can Judge Clearly At All, That My Beauty Would Be Used Like That.

What A Wonderful Song, She Thought-everything Was Wonderful Tonight, Most Of All This Romantic Scene In The Den With Their Hands Clinging And The Inevitable Looming Charmingly Close. The Future Vista Of Her Life Seemed An Unending Succession Of Scenes Like This: Under Moonlight And Pale Starlight, And In The Backs Of Warm Limousines And In Low Cosy Roadsters Stopped Under Sheltering Trees-only The Boy Might Change, And This One Was So Nice.

Unloved Women Have No Biographies-- They Have Histories

Ah," She Cried, "you Look So Cool." Their Eyes Met, And They Stared Together At Each Other, Alone In Space. With An Effort She Glanced Down At The Table. You Always Look So Cool," She Repeated. She Had Told Him That She Loved Him, And Tom Buchanan Saw.

When I See A Beautiful Shell Like That I Can't Help Feeling A Regret About What's Inside It.

It's Never Too Late Or, In My Case, Too Early To Be Whoever You Want To Be.

He's So Dumb He Doesn't Know He's Alive.

It Is Not Merely Enough To Have The Ability To Be Persistant, You Must Also Have The Ability To Start Over.

One Hurries Through, Even Though There's Time; The Past, The Continent, Is Behind; The Future Is The Glowing Mouth In The Side Of The Ship; The Dim, Turbulent Alley Is Too Confusedly The Present.

One Writes Of Scars Healed, A Loose Parallel To The Pathology Of The Skin, But There Is No Such Thing In The Life Of An Individual.

I Suppose Books Mean More Than People To Me Anyway

We Both Fitted. If Our Corners Were Not Rubbed Off They Were At Least Pulled In. But Deep In Us Both Was Something That Made Us Require More For Happiness. I Didn't Know What I Wanted

They Weren't Happy, And Neither Of Them Had Touched The Chicken Or The Ale---and Yet They Weren't Unhappy Either. There Was An Unmistakable Air Of Natural Intimacy About The Picture And Anybody Would Have Said That They Were Conspiring Together.

Isn't Hollywood A Dump-in The Human Sense Of The Word. A Hideous Town, Pointed Up By The Insulting Gardens Of Its Rich, Full Of The Human Spirit At A New Low Of Debasement.

She Wanted To Crawl Into His Pocket And Be Safe Forever.

It Is Difficult For Young People To Live Things Down. We Will Tolerate Vice, Grand Larceny And The Quieter Forms Of Murder In Our Contemporaries... But Our Children's Friends Must Show A Blank Service Record.

Stahr's Eyes And Kathleen's Met And Tangled. For An Instant They Made Love As No One Ever Dares To Do After. Their Glance Was Slower Than An Embrace, More Urgent Than A Call.

Travel, Which Had Once Charmed Him, Seemed, At Length, Unendurable, A Business Of Color Without Substance, A Phantom Chase After His Own Dream's Shadow.

I Thought Of Gatsby's Wonder When He First Picked Out The Green Light At The End Of Daisy's Dock. He Had Come A Long Way To This Lawn And His Dream Must Have Seemed So Close That He Could Hardly Fail To Grasp It. He Did Not Know That It Was Already Behind Him. [- Nick Carroway]

My Latest Tendency Is To Collapse About 11:00 And With The Tears Flowing From My Eyes Or The Gin Rising To Their Level And Leaking Over, And Tell Interested Friends Or Acquaintances That I Haven't A Friend In The World And Likewise Care For Nobody.

Want Any Of This Stuff? Jordan?... Nick?" I Didn't Answer. Nick?" He Asked Again. What?" Want Any?" No... I Just Remembered That Today's My Birthday." I Was Thirty. Before Me Stretched The Portentous, Menacing Road Of A New Decade.

France Was A Land, England Was A People, But America, Having About It Still That Quality Of The Idea, Was Harder To Utter - It Was The Graves At Shiloh And The Tired, Drawn, Nervous Faces Of Its Great Men, And The Country Boys Dying In The Argonne For A Phrase That Was Empty Before Their Bodies Withered. It Was A Willingness Of The Heart.

What'll We Do With Ourselves This Afternoon? And The Day After That, And The Next Thirty Years?

Human Sympathy Has Its Limits.

Joan Crawford Is Doubtless The Best Example Of The Flapper, The Girl You See In Smart Night Clubs, Gowned To The Apex Of Sophistication, Toying Iced Glasses With A Remote, Faintly Bitter Expression, Dancing Deliciously, Laughing A Great Deal, With Wide, Hurt Eyes. Young Things With A Talent For Living.

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.

Possibly It Had Occurred To Him The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. [...] It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Objects Had Diminished By One.

At The Enchanted Metropolitan Twilight I Felt A Haunting Loneliness Sometimes, And Felt It In Others -- Poor Young Clerks Who Loitered In Front Of Windows Waiting Until It Was Time For A Solitary Restaurant Dinner -- Young Clerks In The Dusk, Wasting The Most Poignant Moments Of Night And Life.

There Was Not A Moving Up Into Vacated Places; There Was Simply An Anachronistic Staying On Between A Vanishing Past And An Incalculable Future.

The Greatest Profound Pain Is Cased By, And Is The Result Of Our Own Illusions, Fantasies And Dreams.

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Now He Realized The Truth: That Sacrifice Was No Purchase Of Freedom. It Was Like A Great Elective Office, It Was Like An Inheritance Of Power - To Certain People At Certain Times An Essential Luxury, Carrying With It Not A Guarantee But A Responsibility, Not A Security But An Infinite Risk. Its Very Momentum Might Drag Him Down To Ruin - The Passing Of The Emotional Wave That Made It Possible Might Leave The One Who Made It High And Dry Forever On An Island Of Despair...sacrifice By Its Very Nature Was Arrogant And Impersonal; Sacrifice Should Be Eternally Supercilious.

I Never Blame Failure - There Are Too Many Complicated Situations In Life - But I Am Absolutely Merciless Toward Lack Of Effort.

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A Stirring Warmth Flowed From Her, As If Her Heart Was Trying To Come Out To You Concealed In One Of Those Breathless, Thrilling Words.

A Writer Like Me Must Have An Utter Confidence, An Utter Faith In His Star. It's An Almost Mystical Feeling, A Feeling Of Nothing-can-happen-to Me, Nothing-can-touch-me.... I Once Had It. But Through A Series Of Blows, Many Of Them My Own Fault, Something Happened To That Sense Of Immunity And I Lost My Grip.

There Was A Kindliness About Intoxication - There Was That Indescribable Gloss And Glamour It Gave, Like The Memories Of Ephemeral And Faded Evenings.

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Lie To Me By The Moonlight. Do A Fabulous Story.

No Amount Of Fire Or Freshness Can Challenge What A Man Will Store Up In His Ghostly Heart.

The World Is Always Curious, And People Become Valuable Merely For Their Inaccessibility

I Was Rather Literary In College—one Year I Wrote A Series Of Very Solemn And Obvious Editorials For The 'yale News.'—and Now I Was Going To Bring Back All Such Things Into My Life And Become Again That Most Limited Of All Specialists, The 'well-rounded Man.' This Isn’t Just An Epigram—life Is Much More Successfully Looked At From A Single Window, After All.

People Talk Of The Courage Of Convictions, But In Actual Life A Man's Duty To His Family May Make A Rigid Course Seem A Selfish Indulgence Of His Own Righteousness.

This Is What I Think Now: That The Natural State Of The Sentient Adult Is A Qualified Unhappiness.

Then He Kissed Her. At His Lips' Touch She Blossomed For Him Like A Flower And The Incarnation Was Complete.

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The Two Basic Stories Of All Times Are Cinderella And Jack The Giant Killer-the Charm Of Women And The Courage Of Men.

Daisy Began To Sing With The Music In A Husky, Rhythmic Whisper, Bringing Out A Meaning In Each Word That It Had Never Had Before And Would Never Have Again. When The Melody Rose, Her Voice Broke Up Sweetly, Following It, In A Way Contralto Voices Have, And Each Change Tipped Out A Little Of Her Warm Human Magic Upon The Air.

It Takes A Genius To Whine Appealingly.

Don't Say 'wife.' I'm Your Mistress. Wife's Such An Ugly Word. Your 'permanent Mistress' Is So Much More Tangible And Desirable… .

What Do You Think Of That? It’s Stopped Raining." I’m Glad Jay." Her Throat, Full Of Aching, Grieving Beauty, Told Only Of Her Unexpected Joy.

My God,' He Gasped, 'you're Fun To Kiss.

I'm Not Much Like Myself Any More.

He Looked At Her And For A Moment She Lived In The Bright Blue Worlds Of His Eyes, Eagerly And Confidently.

In A Real Dark Night Of The Soul, It Is Always Three O'clock In The Morning, Day After Day.

Think How You Love Me,' She Whispered. 'i Don't Ask You To Love Me Always Like This, But I Ask You To Remember.' You'll Always Be Like This To Me.' Oh No; But Promise Me You'll Remember.' Her Tears Were Falling. 'i'll Be Different, But Somewhere Lost Inside Me There'll Always Be The Person I Am Tonight.

The Exhilarating Ripple Of Her Voice Was A Wild Tonic In The Rain.

Celibacy Goes Deeper Than The Flesh.

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The Montana Sunset Lay Between The Mountains Like A Giant Bruise From Which Darkened Arteries Spread Across A Poisoned Sky.

There’s A Writer For You,” He Said. “knows Everything And At The Same Time He Knows Nothing.” [narrator]it Was My First Inkling That He Was A Writer. And While I Like Writers—because If You Ask A Writer Anything You Usually Get An Answer—still It Belittled Him In My Eyes. Writers Aren’t People Exactly. Or, If They’re Any Good, They’re A Whole Lot Of People Trying So Hard To Be One Person. It’s Like Actors, Who Try So Pathetically Not To Look In Mirrors. Who Lean Backward Trying—only To See Their Faces In The Reflecting Chandeliers.

Gold? Yellow, Glittering, Precious Gold?... This Yellow Slave Will Knit And Break Religions, Bless Th' Accursed, Make The Hoar Leprosy Adored, Place Thieves, And Give Them Title, Knee And Approbation With Senators On The Bench.

He's A Bootlegger....one Time He Killed A Man Who Found Out That He Was Nephew To Von Hindenburg And Second Cousin To The Devil.

She Was Dazzling-- Alight; It Was Agony To Comprehend Her Beauty In A Glance.

A Squalid Phantasmagoria Of Breath

And After Reading Thoreau I Felt How Much I Have Lost By Leaving Nature Out Of My Life.

He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass.

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If I Knew Words Enough, I Could Write The Longest Love Letter In The World And Never Get Tired

You're A Rotten Driver,' I Protested. 'either You Ought To Be More Careful Or You Oughtn't To Drive At All.' 'i Am Careful.' 'no, You're Not.' 'well, Other People Are,' She Said Lightly. 'what's That Got To Do With It?' 'they'll Keep Out Of My Way,' She Insisted. 'it Takes Two To Make An Accident.' 'suppose You Met Somebody Just As Careless As Yourself.' 'i Hope I Never Will,' She Answered. 'i Hate Careless People. That's Why I Like You.' Her Grey, Sun-strained Eyes Stared Straight Ahead, But She Had Deliberately Shifted Our Relations, And For A Moment I Thought I Loved Her.

Amory Thought How It Was Only The Past That Seemed Strange And Unbelievable.

Rosemary Bubbled With Delight At The Trunks. Her Naivete Responded Whole-heartedly To The Expensive Simplicity Of The Divers, Unaware Of Its Complexity And Its Lack Of Innocence, Unaware That It Was All A Selection Of Quality Rather Than Quantity From The Run Of The World's Bazaar; And That The Simplicity Of Behavior Also, The Nursery-like Peace And Good Will, The Emphasis On The Simpler Virtues, Was Part Of A Desperate Bargain With The Gods And Had Been Attained Through Struggles She Could Not Have Guessed At.

Once In A While I Go Off On A Spree And Make A Fool Of Myself, But I Always Come Back, And In My Heart I Love Her All The Time. - The Great Gatsby.

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Talk English To Me, Tommy. Parlez Francais Avec Moi, Nicole. But The Meanings Are Different-- In French You Can Be Heroic And Gallant With Dignity, And You Know It. But In English You Can't Be Heroic And Gallant Without Being A Little Absurd, And You Know That Too. That Gives Me An Advantage.

Little Montenegro! He Lifted Up The Words And Nodded At Them-with His Smile. The Smile Comprehended Montenegro’s Troubled History And Sympathized With The Brave Struggles Of The Montenegrin People. It Appreciated Fully The Chain Of National Circumstances, Which Had Elicited This Tribute From Montenegro’s Warm Little Heart. My Incredulity Was Submerged In Fascination Now; It Was Like Skimming Hastily Through A Dozen Magazines.

It Is Youth’s Felicity As Well As Its Insufficiency That It Can Never Live In The Present, But Must Always Be Measuring Up The Day Against Its Own Radiantly Imagined Future

Live In The Present

So We Drove On Toward Death Through The Cooling Twilight.

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It's Not A Slam At You When People Are Rude, It's A Slam At The People They've Met Before.

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

If That Was True He Must Have Felt That He Had Lost The Old Warm World, Paid A High Price For Living Too Long With A Single Dream.

The Helpless Ecstasy Of Loosing Himself In Her Charm Was A Powerful Opiate Rather Than A Tonic.

So There Was Not An "i" Anymore - Not A Basis On Which I Could Organize My Self-respect - Save My Limitless Capacity For Toil That It Seemed I Possessed No More.

Poetry Is Either Something That Lives Like Fire Inside You -- Like Music To The Musician Or Marxism To The Communist -- Or Else It Is Nothing, An Empty, Formalized Bore Around Which Pedants Can Endlessly Drone Their Notes And Explanations.

She Saw Him The First Day On Board, And Then Her Heart Sank Into Her Shoes As She Realized At Last How Much She Wanted Him. No Matter What His Past Was, No Matter What He Had Done. Which Was Not To Say That She Would Ever Let Him Know, But Only That He Moved Her Chemically More Than Anyone She Had Ever Met, That All Other Men Seemed Pale Beside Him.

I Want To Know You Moved And Breathed In The Same World With Me.

To Write It, It Took Three Months; To Conceive It Three Minutes; To Collect The Data In It All My Life.

Rosemary Felt That This Swim Would Become The Typical One Of Her Life, The One That Would Always Pop Up In Her Memory At The Mention Of Swimming.

Intelligence Is A Mere Instrument Of Circumstances.

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.

Girls Like You Are Responsible For All The Tiresome Colorless Marriages; All Those Ghastly Inefficiencies That Pass As Feminine Qualities. What A Blow It Must Be When A Man With Imagination Marries The Beautiful Bundle Of Clothes That He's Been Building Ideals Around, And Finds That She's Just A Weak, Whining, Cowardly Mass Of Affectations!

He Had Angered Providence By Resisting Too Many Temptations. There Was Nothing Left But Heaven, Where He Would Meet Only Those Who, Like Him, Had Wasted Earth.

Once I Thought That Lake Forest Was The Most Glamorous Place In The World. Maybe It Was.

Long Afterward Amory Thought Of Sophomore Spring As The Happiest Time Of His Life. His Ideas Were In Tune With Life As He Found It; He Wanted No More Than To Drift And Dream And Enjoy A Dozen New-found Friendships Through The April Afternoons.

Who Would Not Be Pleased At Carrying Lamps Helpfully Through The Darkness?

Any Person With Any Imagination Is Bound To Be Afraid.

They Were Still In The Happier Stage Of Love. They Were Full Of Brave Illusions About Each Other, Tremendous Illusions, So That The Communion Of Self With Self Seemed To Be On A Plane Where No Other Human Relations Mattered. They Both Seemed To Have Arrived There With An Extraordinary Innocence As Though A Series Of Pure Accidents Had Driven Them Together, So Many Accidents That At Last They Were Forced To Conclude That They Were For Each Other. They Had Arrived With Clean Hands, Or So It Seemed, After No Traffic With The Merely Curious And Clandestine.

He Had Waited Five Years And Bought A Mansion Where He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths - So That He Could 'come Over' Some Afternoon To A Stranger's Garden.

When Vanity Kissed Vanity, A Hundred Happy Junes Ago, He Pondered O'er Her Breathlessly, And, That All Men Might Ever Know, He Rhymed Her Eyes With Life And Death: "thru Time I'll Save My Love!" He Said. . . Yet Beauty Vanished With His Breath, And, With Her Lovers, She Was Dead. . . -ever His Wit And Not Her Eyes, Ever His Art And Not Her Hair: "who'd Learn A Trick In Rhyme, Be Wise And Pause Before His Sonnet There". . . So All My Words, However True, Might Sing You To A Thousandth June, And No One Ever Know That You Were Beauty For An Afternoon.

You Remind Me Of A Smoked Cigarette.

He Lifted His Arms To The Crystaline, Radiant Sky. "i Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All.

It Seemed That The Only Lover She Had Ever Wanted Was A Lover In A Dream.

I Just Couldn't Make The Grade As A Hack-that, Like Everything Else, Requires A Certain Practiced Excellence.

I Don't Think He Was Ever Happy Unless Someone Was In Love With Him, Responding To Him Like Filings To A Magnet, Helping Him To Explain Himself, Promising Him Something. What It Was I Do Not Know. Perhaps They Promised That There Would Always Be Women In The World Who Would Spend Their Brightest, Freshest, Rarest Hours To Nurse And Protect That Superiority He Cherished In His Heart.

But I Always Felt That I'd Rather Be Provincial Hot-tamale Than Soup Without Seasoning.

She Was A Dark, Unenduring Little Flower - Yet He Thought He Detected In Her Some Quality Of Spiritual Reticence, Of Strength Drawn From Her Passive Acceptance Of All Things. In This He Was Mistaken.

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.

The Bottle Of Whiskey - The Second One - Was Now In Constant Demand By All Present, Excepting Catherine, Who 'felt Just As Good On Nothing At All.

I Am Tired Of Knowing Nothing And Being Reminded Of It All The Time.

Knowing Nothing

Writers Aren’t People Exactly. Or, If They’re Any Good, They’re A Whole Lot Of People Trying So Hard To Be One Person.

There's A Right Way Of Doing Things And A Wrong Way. If You've Made Up Your Mind To Be Different From Everybody Else, I Don't Suppose I Can Stop You, But I Really Don't Think It's Very Considerate.

No Grand Idea Was Ever Born In A Conference, But A Lot Of Foolish Ideas Have Died There.

I Want To Give A Really Bad Party. I Mean It. I Want To Give A Party Where There’s A Brawl And Seductions And People Going Home With Their Feelings Hurt And Women Passed Out In The Cabinet De Toilette. You Wait And See.

Let's Borrow Life Preservers And Jump Over. I Think We Should Do Something Spectacular. I Feel That All Our Lives Have Been Too Restrained.

Character Is Plot, Plot Is Character.

I'm A Slave To My Emotions, To My Likes, To My Hatred Of Boredom, To Most Of My Desires

I Learned A Little Of Beauty - Enough To Know That It Had Nothing To Do With Truth - And I Found, Moreover, That There Was No Great Literary Tradition; There Was Only The Tradition Of The Eventful Death Of Every Literary Tradition.

I Am Slow-thinking And Full Of Interior Rules That Act As Brakes On My Desires.

Great Gatsby Love

Dishonesty In A Woman Is A Thing You Never Blame Deeply.

Great Gatsby Love

She Looked At Me And Laughed Pointlessly. Then She Flounced Over To The Dog, Kissed It With Ecstasy, And Swept Into The Kitchen, Implying That A Dozen Chefs Awaited Her Orders There.

He Snatched Out His Hand Desperately As If To Snatch Only A Wisp Of Air, To Save A Fragment Of The Spot That She Had Made Lovely For Him. But It Was All Going By Too Fast Now For His Burred Eyes And He Knew That He Had Lost That Part Of It, The Freshest And The Best, Forever.

It's Just Because I Love The Past That I Want This House To Look Back On Its Glamourous Moment Of Youth And Beauty, And I Want Its Stairs To Creak As If To The Footsteps Of Women With Hoop Skirts And Men In Boots And Spurs. But They've Made It Into A Blondined, Rouged-up Old Woman Of Sixty.

To A Profound Pessimist About Life, Being In Danger Is Not Depressing.

I Had A Strong Sudden Instinct That I Must Be Alone. I Didn’t Want To See Any People At All. I Had Seen So Many People All My Life -- I Was An Average Mixer, But More Than Average In A Tendency To Identify Myself, My Ideas, My Destiny, With Those Of All Classes That Came In Contact With. I Was Always Saving Or Being Saved -- In A Single Morning I Would Go Through The Emotions Ascribable To Wellington At Waterloo. I Lived In A World Of Inscrutable Hostiles And Inalienable Friends And Supporters.

He Smiled Understandingly-much More Than Understandingly. It 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. It Understood You Just As Far As You Wanted To Be Understood, Believed In You As You Would Like To Believe In Yourself, And Assured You That It Had Precisely The Impression Of You That, At Your Best, You Hoped To Convey.

Intermittently She Caught The Gist Of His Sentences And Supplied The Rest From Her Subconscious, As One Picks Up The Striking Of A Clock In The Middle With Only The Rhythm Of The First Uncounted Strokes Lingering In The Mind.

Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard.

Englishmen Must Have An Island.

Premature Success Gives One An Almost Mystical Conception Of Destiny As Opposed To Will Power-at Its Worst The Napoleonic Delusion.

I Was In Love With A Whirlwind, So When The Girl Threw Me Over, I Went Home And Finished My Novel.

I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of...

It 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.

For A While These Reveries Provided An Outlet For His Imagination; They Were A Satisfactory Hint Of The Unreality Of Reality, A Promise That The Rock Of The World Was Founded Securely On A Fairy's Wing.

Scratch A Yale Man With Both Hands And You'll Be Lucky To Find A Coast-guard. Usually You Find Nothing At All.

Praise The Power That Hath Made And Preserved Us A Nation. Then Conquer We Must, For Our Cause It Is Just, And This Be Our Motto: "in God Is Our Trust." And The Star-spangled Banner Forever Shall Wave O'er The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave!

I Have Lived Hard And Ruined The Essential Innocence [sic] In Myself That Could Make It That Possible [sic], And The Fact That I Have Abused Liquor Is Something To Be Paid For With Suffering And Death Perhaps But Not Renunciation.

Suffering And Death

He Had Seen Me Several Times, And Had Intended To Call On Me Long Before, But A Peculiar Combination Of Circumstances Had Prevented It.

It Is Not Life That's Complicated, It's The Struggle To Guide And Control Life.

She Admired Him; She Was Used To Clutching Her Hands Together In His Wake And Heaving Audible Sighs.

Genius Goes Around The World In Its Youth Incessantly Apologizing For Having Large Feet. What Wonder That Later In Life It Should Be Inclined To Raise Those Feet Too Swiftly To Fools And Bores.

There Was Never A Good Biography Of A Good Novelist. There Couldn't Be. He Is Too Many People If He's Any Good.

Reporting The Extreme Things As If They Were The Average Things Will Start You On The Art Of Fiction.

Nothing Is As Obnoxious As Other People's Luck.

Angry, And Half In Love With Her, And Tremendously Sorry, I Turned Away.

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Switzerland Is A Country Where Very Few Things Begin, But Many Things End.

...i Think He Revalued Everything In His House According To The Measure Of Response It Drew From Her Well-loved Eyes.

When The Lightning Strikes One Of Us, It Strikes Both

I Hope I Haven't Given You The Impression That I Consider Kissing Intrinsically Irrational.

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.

There Are Only The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired.

Great Gatsby American Dream

Speech Is An Arrangement Of Notes That Will Never Be Played Again.

Let Me Tell You About The Very Rich. They Are Different From You And Me.

A Great Social Success Is A Pretty Girl Who Plays Her Cards As Carefully As If She Were Plain.

Action Is Character.

The Truth Was That Jay Gatsby, Of West Egg, Long Island, Sprang From His Platonic Conception Of Himself. He Was A Son Of God—a Phrase Which, If It Means Anything, Means Just That—and He Must Be About His Father’s Business, The Service Of A Vast, Vulgar And Meretricious Beauty.

All I Think Of Ever Is That I Love You.

You Know I'm Old In Some Ways-in Others-well, I'm Just A Little Girl. I Like Sunshine And Pretty Things And Cheerfulness-and I Dread Responsibility.

People Living Alone Get Used To Loneliness.

Aristocracy's Only An Admission That Certain Traits Which We Call Fine - Courage And Honor And Beauty And All That Sort Of Thing - Can Best Be Developed In A Favorable Environment, Where You Don't Have The Warpings Of Ignorance And Necessity.

Let Us Learn To Show Our Friendship For A Man When He Is Alive And Not After He Is Dead.

Shakespeare--whetting, Frustrating, Surprising And Gratifying.

But He Hated To Be Sober. It Made Him Conscious Of The People Around Him, Of That Air Of Struggle, Of Greedy Ambition, Of Hope More Sordid Than Despair, Of Incessant Passage Up Or Down.

Something Was Making Him Nibble At The Edge Of Stale Ideas As If His Sturdy Physical Egotism No Longer Nourished His Peremptory Heart.

Then There Came A Faraway, Booming Voice Like A Low, Clear Bell. It Came From The Center Of The Bowl And Down The Great Sides To The Ground And Then Bounced Toward Her Eagerly. 'you See I Am Fate,' It Shouted, 'and Stronger Than Your Puny Plans; And I Am How-things-turn-out And I Am Different From Your Little Dreams, And I Am The Flight Of Time And The End Of Beauty And Unfulfilled Desire; All The Accidents And Imperceptions And The Little Minutes That Shape The Crucial Hours Are Mine. I Am The Exception That Proves No Rules, The Limits Of Your Control, The Condiment In The Dish Of Life.

Men Don’t Often Know Those Times When A Girl Could Be Had For Nothing.

The Intimate Revelations Of Young Men, Or At Least The Terms In Which They Express Them, Are Usually Plagiaristic And Marred By Obvious Suppressions.

I've Got An Adjective That Just Fits You.

Actually That’s My Secret — I Can’t Even Talk About You To Anybody Because I Don’t Want Any More People To Know How Wonderful You Are.

The World, As A Rule, Does Not Live On Beaches And In Country Clubs.

You Really Ought To Read More Books - You Know, Those Things That Look Like Blocks But Come Apart On One Side.

Well, I Can't Describe Her Exactly-except To Say That She Was Beautiful. She Was-tremendously Alive.

In The Morning You Were Never Violently Sorry-- You Made No Resolutions, But If You Had Overdone It And Your Heart Was Slightly Out Of Order, You Went On The Wagon For A Few Days Without Saying Anything About It, And Waited Until An Accumulation Of Nervous Boredom Projected You Into Another Party.

Smoking Had Come To Be An Important Punctuation Mark In The Long Sentence Of A Day On The Road.

Punctuation Marks

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.

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. 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 Will Store Up In His Ghostly Heart.

Do You Ever Wait For The Longest Day Of The Year And Then Miss It? I Always Wait For The Longest Day Of The Year And Then Miss It!

I'm Restless. My Whole Generation Is Restless. I'm Sick Of A System Where The Richest Man Gets The Most Beautiful Girl If He Wants Her, Where The Artist Without An Income Has To Sell His Talents To A Button Manufacturer. Even If I Had No Talents I'd Not Be Content To Work Ten Years, Condemned Either To Celibacy Or A Furtive Indulgence, To Give Some Man's Son An Automobile.

The Unwelcome November Rain Had Perversely Stolen The Day's Last Hour And Pawned It With That Ancient Fence, The Night.

Gatsby Turned Out All Right At The End; It Is What Preyed On Gatsby, What Foul Dust Floated In The Wake Of His Dreams That Temporarily Closed Out My Interest In The Abortive Sorrows And Short-winded Elations Of Men.

Only Remember West Of The Mississippi It's A Little More Look, See, Act. A Little Less Rationalize, Comment, Talk.

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.

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Alan Jay Lerner

Amos Bronson Alcott

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