One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.

Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply.

Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.

Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot.