17 Great Gatsby Quotes
The careless people, that last line and the best lines from Daisy, Tom, Nick and Jordan, checked against the original text.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) is in the public domain. Every quote here is copied from the original text, with who says it, so you can use it with confidence.
Daisy Buchanan quotes
I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
“They're such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”
“You see I think everything's terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.”
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Tom Buchanan quotes
“Civilization's going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently.
“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.”
I know I'm not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends—in the modern world.
“She's not leaving me!” Tom's words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. “Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring he put on her finger.”
Nick Carraway quotes
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
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 …
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.
“I'm thirty,” I said. “I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.”
Jordan Baker quotes
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy.
I hate careless people. That's why I like you.
More Great Gatsby quotes
Her voice is full of money.
Not in the book
Famous lines people credit to The Great Gatsby that aren't in the novel.
“Rich girls don't marry poor boys.”
Often credited to Daisy, but it isn't in the novel. It comes from a film adaptation, not from Fitzgerald.
Save the lines that stop you mid-page
Reading The Great Gatsby? Parch keeps every quote attached to the book it came from, scans a line straight from the page, and turns any of them into a card to share. Free on iPhone and Android.
Questions about Great Gatsby quotes
What does "boats against the current" mean?
It's the novel's last line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Nick pictures people rowing toward the future while the current keeps carrying them back, like Gatsby trying to recapture his past with Daisy.
What is the last line of The Great Gatsby?
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." It is also engraved on Fitzgerald's gravestone.
Who says "Her voice is full of money"?
Gatsby, to Nick, when Nick says Daisy has an indiscreet voice and hesitates over what it is full of.
Who says "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall"?
Jordan Baker, on the stifling afternoon at the Buchanans' house before everyone drives into New York.
Is The Great Gatsby in the public domain?
Yes, in the United States since January 1, 2021, 95 years after its 1925 publication, so you can read it free and quote it freely there.