F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes - page 19

The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p. m. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And then one fine morning- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
They were careless people... 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.... View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
All the bright precious things fade so fast, and they don't come back. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my own rule is to let everything alone. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the rest of my life. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
It happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Your photograph is all I have: it is with me from the morning when I wake up with a frantic half dream about you to the last moment when I think of you and of death at night. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I'd like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving--but he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It's a sad season of life without growth...It has no day. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
So the men did, and they died. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. 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. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Life was a damned muddle . . . a football game with every one off-side and the referee gotten rid of--every one claiming the referee would have been on his side. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald