F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Jazz Age legend, lived a life as dramatic as his novels. A dizzying rise to fame, a fiery romance with Zelda, shadowed by the lows of the Great Depression and his own personal struggles, all came to an end tragically at the age of 44. His experiences deeply influenced his writing, offering us a genuine peek into his era and soul. Now, let me share with you 20 of my favorite Fitzgerald quotes, beautifully complemented by Vincent van Gogh’s stunning artwork – it’s a truly magical pairing. Enjoy!
1. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― The Great Gatsby
2. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
― The Great Gatsby
3. “Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.”
― Tender Is the Night
4. “I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
5. “That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― The Great Gatsby
6. “All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust of high explosive love.”
― Tender is the Night
7. “I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.”
― The Last Tycoon: An Unfinished Novel
8. “I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self-respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be.”
― On Zelda from a letter to Isabelle Amorous
9. “All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— ‘I love you.’”
― The Offshore Pirate from Short Stories
10. “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”
― The Great Gatsby
11. “I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”
― The Great Gatsby
12. “I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
― The Great Gatsby
13. “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.”
― The Great Gatsby
14. “It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.”
― Notebooks
15. “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”
― On Zelda from a letter to Isabelle Amorous
16. “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.”
― The Great Gatsby
17. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”
― The Great Gatsby
18. “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― The Great Gatsby
19. “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.”
― Tender is the Night
20. “I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight.”
― Tender is the Night
Alright, over to you! Got a favorite quote or thought? Drop a comment and share away. And hey, if you’re craving more, check out our other American lit legends’ quote collections:
📖 John Steinbeck in 13 Quotes
📖 J.D. Salinger’s 10 Best Quotes
📖 Jack Kerouac’s Raw & Real Quotes
📖 James Baldwin’s Powerful Quotes
📖 Hunter S. Thompson’s Best Quotes
📖 Ernest Hemingway’s Finest Quotes