As the gin-soaked specter of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald used his pen to create literary masterpieces that have transcended time, capturing the spirit of an era like a melody in the wind. His works such as “The Great Gatsby” and “Tender is the Night” not only immortalized him as a literary luminary but also chronicled the vibrancy, excess, and melancholy of the 1920s. But did you know the genius of Fitzgerald extended beyond his novels? Get ready to dive into the whirlwind that was Fitzgerald's life with 50 incredible “Jazz Age F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes” that will whisk you away to the Roaring Twenties.
Fitzgerald, a true raconteur, lived his life with the same flamboyant intensity as the characters he penned. One day, a young Ernest Hemingway walked into a Parisian cafe and found Fitzgerald sprawled over the bar, nursing a drink, lost in thought. As the story goes, Fitzgerald, in his signature whimsical style, remarked, “Ernest, the rich are different from you and me.” That single sentence, later immortalized in his short story, “The Rich Boy,” is an iconic reflection of his insightful observations, peppered with humor and tragedy. Unearth more such pearls of wisdom as we delve into the gold mine of “F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes” straight from the heart of the Jazz Age. Get ready to step back in time and dance to the rhythm of his words!
The Great Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover
1. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – The Great Gatsby
2. “I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” – The Great Gatsby
3. “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.” – The Great Gatsby
4. “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” – The Great Gatsby
5. “He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” – The Great Gatsby
6. “I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” – The Great Gatsby
7. “I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.” – The High-Bouncing Lover
8. “You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” – The High-Bouncing Lover
9. “Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat… the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.” – The High-Bouncing Lover
10. “She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring.” – The High-Bouncing Lover
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Tender is the Night and The Beautiful and Damned
- “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
- “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
- “I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember.” – Tender is the Night
- “At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.” – Tender is the Night
- “Things are sweeter when they're finally over.” – The Beautiful and Damned
- “I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.” – The Beautiful and Damned
- “Beauty, the splendor of truth, and the burn of reality.” – The Beautiful and Damned
- “All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— ‘I love you.'” – The Beautiful and Damned
- “In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning.” – The Beautiful and Damned
- “The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree and would argue that individuals' wants and passions disrupt society and must be limited.” – The Beautiful and Damned
This Side of Paradise and Tales of the Jazz Age
- “I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.” – This Side of Paradise
- “I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” – This Side of Paradise
- “You can't think; you're not yourself; you're somebody else.” – This Side of Paradise
- “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” – This Side of Paradise
- “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 schoolmaster of ever afterward.” – This Side of Paradise
- “Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” – Tales of the Jazz Age
- “The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round.” – Tales of the Jazz Age
- “He was a slave to his own moods and he felt that though he was a rabbit at times, at least he was a rabbit with a personality.” – Tales of the Jazz Age
- “Let’s go to the movies. There is no more beautiful sight in the world than the vision of a cold scotch and soda at the movies.” – Tales of the Jazz Age
- “To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.” – Tales of the Jazz Age
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Flappers and Philosophers
- “It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “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.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “I don't want to go home. And I don't want to go to anybody else's home.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “It’s the people that haven’t done anything who are always doing things—that make you lose your temper.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… there is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “One should always be drunk. That's all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” – Flappers and Philosophers
- “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” – Flappers and Philosophers
The Short Stories
- “The very rich are different from you and me.” – The Rich Boy
- “We were born to strive and endure.” – The Short Stories
- “At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That’s a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try.” – The Short Stories
- “Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.” – The Short Stories
- “There are no second acts in American lives.” – The Last Tycoon
- “It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.” – The Short Stories
- “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp inthe fall.” – The Short Stories
- “Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.” – The Short Stories
- “Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.” – The Short Stories
- “I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.” – The Short Stories
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