100+ Timeless Great Gatsby Quotes for Inspiration and Reflection
In this article, we dive into the world of "The Great Gatsby," a classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, capturing the extravagance and wistfulness of the Jazz Age. With a focus on memorable quotes, this collection is designed to resonate with today's Instagram audience, celebrating timeless themes of hope, love, and the allure of the American Dream. Each subtitle offers a unique lens through which these iconic words can be appreciated and shared, from those highlighting Gatsby's eternal optimism to those reflecting on love and tragedy. Prepare to be inspired by these quotes, perfect for encapsulating your own reflections on life and ambition.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."
"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
"He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it."
"The colossal vitality of his illusion had gone beyond Daisy, beyond everything."
"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."
"The whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes."
"I had the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."
"The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself."
"The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night."
"His dream had died without ever achieving the magic that he believed it to hold."
"He had an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."
"I wish I had done everything on earth with you."
"At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes."
"It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again."
"He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man."
"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."
"You can't repeat the past."
"Gatsby? What Gatsby?"
"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
"I keep it always full of interesting people; night and day. People who do interesting things. Celebrated people."
"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."
"He looked at her as all women want to be looked at by a man."
"The world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn."
"The rich get richer and the poor get—children."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
"I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window...none of it mattered."
"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
"I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy."
"He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it."
"A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth."
"The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged."
"Gatsby's house had never seemed so enormous, or so filled with the peace that lies upon the grass on hot sunny afternoons..."
"By the end of the afternoon, the room was crowded and the old island...floated us out into the new unexplored sea."
"They lived in a house that was more elaborate than I had believed possible,"
"Whenever you feel like critizing anyone just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."
"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."
"He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: 'I never loved you.'
"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."
"The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself."
"I am still afraid of missing something if I forgot that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth."
"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
"My life, old sport, my life. My life, my life, old sport."
"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."
"His dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it."
"He invented the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end."
"He threw dust into your eyes just like a magician would irritate you and let the whole audience know it was clever of him."
"He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of reassurance in it."
"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
"His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it."
"Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
"Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window."
"The poor son-of-a-bitch,"
"Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of distortion."
"I'd like to get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around."
"I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified."
"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."
"The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime..."
"People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other..."
"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."
"She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand."
"One of the most poignant moments of this tragedy comes at the very end."
"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."
"It takes two to make an accident."
"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow,"
"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
"That's my middle-west—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth..."
"But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up."
"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings."
"She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her."
"Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!"
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
"His dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it."
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."
"The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised."
"The past is locked up in the heart like a bird in a cage."
"I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
"Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock and loved it, so much when the bagpipes complained so that we would always be trusting the humdrum future not to puff out the flames that had come long ago, from secret sources from the past..."
"It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..."
"It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person."
"The transition from libertine adolescence to tragic maturity."
"They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together."
"He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it."
"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon, and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"
"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away."
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."
"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
"I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes."
"I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated."
"He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass."
"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."
"It was the kind of story you heard about in college; that it would be mutual and meant to be, and forever beautiful, like his wild little electric train rushing into the tunnel of future."
"This idea is that we're North and they've been South all the time, they are the others, saying that we're mundane things that like the blues."
"They were careless people."
"I’ve got my hands full," I said. "I’m much obliged but I could use that help."
"He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life."
"It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again."
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."
"I wanted to get somebody for him; I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: I’ll get somebody for you."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness."
"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."
"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow, she told me matter-of-factly. Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people."
"He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise."
"Do you know what a football is?"
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness."
"The poor son-of-a-bitch."
"Gatsby believed in the green light."
"He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is."
"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
"He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man."
"There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind."
"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and let other people clean up the mess."
"I just remembered that today’s my birthday."
"The ceremony was simple and marred by a single moment of confusion."
"Gatsby believed in the green light, signifying all the challenges he hoped to overcome."
