The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

“adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life, a retreat first from a front with many shelters, those myriad amusements and curiosities of youth, to a line with less, when we peel down our ambitions to one ambition, our recreations to one recreation, our friends to a few to whom we are anaesthetic; ending up at last in a solitary, desolate strong point that is not strong, where the shells now whistle abominably, now are but half-heard as, by turns frightened and tired, we sit waiting for death. At forty, then, Merlin was no different from himself at thirty-five; a larger paunch, a gray twinkling near his ears, a more certain lack of vivacity in his walk. His forty-five differed from his forty by a like margin, unless one mention a slight deafness in his left ear. But at fifty-five the process had become a chemical change of immense rapidity. Yearly he was more and more an "old man" to his family--senile almost, so far as his wife was concerned. He was by this time complete owner of the bookshop. The mysterious Mr. Moonlight Quill, dead some five years and not survived by his wife, had deeded the whole stock and store to him, and there he still spent his days, conversant now by name with almost all that man has recorded for three thousand years, a human catalogue, an authority upon tooling and binding, upon folios and first editions, an accurate inventory of a thousand authors whom he could never have understood and had certainly never read. At sixty-five he distinctly doddered. He had assumed the melancholy habits of the aged so often portrayed by the second old man in standard Victorian comedies. He consumed vast warehouses of time searching for mislaid spectacles. He "nagged" his wife and was nagged in turn. He told the same jokes three or four times a year at the family table, and gave his son weird, impossible directions as to his conduct in life. Mentally and materially he was so entirely different from the Merlin Grainger of twenty-five that it seemed incongruous that he should bear the same name. He worked still In the bookshop with the assistance of a youth, whom, of course, he considered”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?” “Very much.” “It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘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.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If her person was property she could exercise whatever advantage was inherent in its ownership.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete F. Scott Fitzgerald: including The Great Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

“tanagra figure;”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“They were tougher and”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“preparing”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“New friends,” he said, as if it were an important point, “can often have a better time together than old friends.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delphi Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“This was because she knew few words and believed in none, and in the world she was rather silent, contributing just her share of urbane humor with a precision that approached meagreness.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delphi Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Do you want to go in the water?” he asked. “Not yet,” she answered. After this impassioned argument there was an interruption.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He looked about him with a sort of alarm”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Nothing will ever be the same again,” he said to himself. “She will never be happy in her marriage and I will never be happy at all any more.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“But that young lady may be a stenographer and yet be compelled to warp herself”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Mother”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Gladys Van Schellinger had never been his girl”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The English nurse always said ‘Please”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“They were heavily endowed for love”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“She made a clicking sound in her teeth that comprised the essence of all human scorn.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“We liked to die laughin’ … ‘—said he was fixin’ to shoot him without he stayed away.’ The girls ‘’clared to heaven’; the men ‘took oath’ on inconsequential statements. ‘How come you nearly about forgot to come by for me—’ and the incessant Honey”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Mrs Poindexter was perhaps thirty-five”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“She did not know he was in Boston—he did not want her to know until he was ready. He followed her every move in the society columns of the papers.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He did not realize that she had not been really angry about the pin or the prom”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He had had an unusually happy life. Those frictions between man and man”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Who am I?” he repeated; “I am five years.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Ede Karr”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“At five o’clock the sombre egg-shaped room at the Ritz ripens to subtle melody—the light clat-clat of one lump”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“A bill to sterilize agnostics is before Congress—”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The Majestic came gliding into New York harbor on an April morning. She sniffed at the tugboats and turtle-gaited ferries”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“First you begin to neglect your religion,” cried his father”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“his mystical worship of the Empire Builder”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He must try now with all his might to be sorry for his sins—not because he was afraid”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald