The Great Gatsby quotes

Civilization’s going to pieces. I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things.

Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.

And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering—look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby.

I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun.

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.

Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?

And Daisy ought to have something in her life.

What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him.

I married him because I thought he was a gentleman. I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.

By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.

She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.