The Great Gatsby Quotes

"In my younger and more vulernable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
'Whenever you feel like critizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'" -- Nick Carraway, Chapter 1

"Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope." --Nick Carraway, Chapter 1

"Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life..." Nick Carraway, Chapter 1

"No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it was 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." --Nick Carraway, Chapter 1

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness." --Daisy Buchanan, Chapter 1

"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. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it..." --Nick Carraway describing Daisy, Chapter 1

"'All right,' I said, '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.'" --Daisy, on the birth of her daughter, Chapter 1

"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." Nick Carraway, Chapter 2

"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtures, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever met." --Nick Carraway, Chapter 3

"On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby's house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn." --Nick Carraway, Chapter 4

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." --Nick Carraway, Chapter 5

"'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" --Gatsby, Chapter 6

"'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly." --Gatsby describing Daisy, Chapter 7

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." --Nick Carraway, Chapter 7

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Nick Carraway, Chapter 9