💬 Quotes

"Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what really freedom is."

"Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them."

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!"

"I would always rather be happy than dignified."

"Women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do."

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

"Reader, I married him."

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

"I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness."

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."

"Can’t repeat the past? ... Why of course you can!"

"I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy."

"I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I wouldn't lie to myself even about that. I didn't do it to gain a mother's love—I didn't do it to become a benefactor to humanity or a vampire. I just did it; I did it for myself, for my own self alone."

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."

"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."

"I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity."

"Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice. That's a truism."

"The soul is not a bag of grain; you cannot measure it out and distribute it. It is something much more complex and perhaps more fragile than we care to admit."