F. Scott Fitzgerald famous quotes

It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Littles #World #Inspired

His youth seemed never so vanished as now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and that riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had been the merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of beauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Loneliness #Party #Sleep

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Family #Home #Skins

And in the end, we were all just humans...Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Ideas #Drunk #Ends

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Encouraging #Spiritual

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

#Trying #Forget #Stranger

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Life #Fall #I Hate You

For what it's worth, it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of and if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Starting Over #Too Late #Want

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Motivational #Moving On

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Literature #Firsts #Consciousness

The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Eye #World #Want

We all have souls of different ages
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Soul #Age #Different

Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Men #Mixtures #Charming

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Regret #Past #Lost

I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Love #Curiosity #Affection

Action is character.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Motivational #Success

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

#Want

Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Cute #Friendship #Men

She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Feelings #World #Pressure

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#People #Mind #Want

i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Boredom #Hatred #Desire

I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Taken #Eye #Two

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Intellectual #May

Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice. --The Sensible Thing
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#World #April #Kind

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Drinking #Recovery

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Lonely #Book #Reading

You are mysterious, I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Beautiful #Love You #Intelligent

Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Sorry #Half #Angry

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Believe #Quality #Prejudice

You have a place in my heart no one else ever could have.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Heart #My Heart

There was a kindliness about intoxication - there was that indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Memories #Evening #Ephemeral

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was ....
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Confused #Past #Ideas

There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Love #Life #World

Forgotten is forgiven.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Forgiveness #Forgiving #Forgotten

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Men #Race #Differences

That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Summer #Conviction #Familiar

I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Kissing #Might #Habit

When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Girl #Fashion #Forget

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Literature #Joints #Germs

Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind?
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Sadness #Eye #Mirrors

The victor belongs to the spoils.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Literature #Spoil

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

#Looks #Littles #West

The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Atheist #Technology #Years

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Time #Powerful

A man's social rank is determined by the amount of bread he eats in a sandwich.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Men #Sandwiches #Bread

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Stories #Chairs

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Girl #Stars #Men

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Bridges #Cities #Promise

Life was a damned muddle - a football game with everyone offside and the referee gotten rid of - everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Life #Football #Games

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Girl #Play #Cards

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Thinking #Discipline #Taste

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Inspirational #Looks #Caves

Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Rejection #Stories #Hell

Beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist who doesn't fit.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Art #Artist #Intellectual

Never confuse activity with action.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Action

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Swimming #History

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Heart #People

I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Shining #Goes On #World

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Father #Years #Advice

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Long #Gone #Care

What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Years #Afternoon #Next

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Good Luck #People #Envy

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Fall #Thinking #Promise

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Country #Beach #Doe

She smiled, a moving childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Moving #World #Youth

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Generations #Literature

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Mean #Exercise #Men

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!
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Years #Waiting #Missing

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Successful #Personality #Unbroken

Well, I can't describe her exactly-except to say that she was beautiful. She was-tremendously alive.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Beautiful #Reading #Alive

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Depressing #Profound #Danger

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Judgement #Matter #Infinite

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Data #Three

She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving herself
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Flower #Conscious #Prolonging

The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Work #Eye #Men

Don't forget who you are and where you come from.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Where You Come #Forget #Who You Are

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Girl #Hurt #Smart

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Letting Go #Years #Two

Every act of life, from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner, became an effort. I hated the night when I couldn't sleep and I hated the day because it went toward night.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Depression #Morning #Sleep

You will walk differently alone, dear, through a thicker atmosphere, forcing your way through the shadows of chairs, through the dripping smoke of the funnels. You will feel your own reflection sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Life #Spring #Eye

One thin's sure and nothing's surer The rich get richer and the poor get — children. In the meantime, In between time...
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Time #Children #Rich

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Moving #Gold #Hats

Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Happiness #Past #Afternoon

He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Men #Greatest Love #Want

Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Philosophy #Carpe Diem #Laissez Faire

She was overstrained with grief and loneliness: almost any shoulder would have done as well.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Loneliness #Grief #Done

At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Morning #Moon #Fifteen

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Drinking #Wine #Too Much

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #People #Trying

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Reading #I Hate You #Wedding Speech

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.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Summer #Sunshine #Tree

New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world. The returning troops marched up Fifth Avenue and girls were instinctively drawn East and North toward them - this was the greatest nation and there was gala in the air.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Girl #New York #Air

I want to be a society vampire, you see.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Vampire #Want

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

#Heart #People #Feelings

I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Care #Want

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #Cutting #Epic

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Fall #Autumn #Positivity

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Writing #People #Stories

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

#Philosophy #Enchanted #Variety