1,417 Quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The present was the thing – work to do and someone to love. But not to love too much, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter or a mother to a son by attaching them too closely: afterward, out in the world, the child would seek in the marriage partner the same blind tenderness and, failing probably to find it, turn against love and life.

I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud – proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed.

They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.

I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

There’s a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you’ve made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don’t suppose I can stop you, but I really don’t think it’s very considerate.

For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

If I knew words enough, I could write the longest love letter in the world and never get tired.

Learn young about hard work and manners – and you’ll be through the whole dirty mess and nicely dead again before you know it.