NovelGuide: The Great Gatsby: Top Ten Quotes

Top Ten Quotes

1) Nick, on Gatsby: "Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men" (6).

2) Daisy, on her newborn girl: "All right...I'm glad it's a girl. And I
hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool" (21).

3) Nick, on himself: "Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known" (64).

4) Nick, on Gatsby's idealization of Daisy: "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion" (101).

5) Gatsby, on Nick's assertion that he can't repeat the past: "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can" (116).

6) Nick, on Tom Buchanan: "There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind..." (131).

7) Tom Buchanan, on Gatsby: "I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out..." (137).

8) Nick, on Gatsby: "They're a rotten crowd....You're worth the whole damn bunch put together" (162).

9) Nick, on the Buchanans: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (188).

10) Nick, on resilience: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (189).