F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes And Sayings

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, known professionally as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s. Fitzgerald also wrote numerous short stories, many of which treat themes of youth and promise, and age and despair.

Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures.

The Test Of A First-rate Intelligence Is The Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas In Mind At The Same Time And Still Retain The Ability To Function.

There Are Only The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired.

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.

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.

Family Quarrels Are Bitter Things. They Don't Go According To Any Rules. They're Not Like Aches Or Wounds, They're More Like Splits In The Skin That Won't Heal Because There's Not Enough Material.

You Don't Write Because You Want To Say Something, You Write Because You Have Something To Say.

Nothing Is As Obnoxious As Other People's Luck.

Men Get To Be A Mixture Of The Charming Mannerisms Of The Women They Have Known.

Cut Out All These Exclamation Points. An Exclamation Point Is Like Laughing At Your Own Joke.

It Is Sadder To Find The Past Again And Find It Inadequate To The Present Than It Is To Have It Elude You And Remain Forever A Harmonious Conception Of Memory.

Everybody's Youth Is A Dream, A Form Of Chemical Madness.

No Grand Idea Was Ever Born In A Conference, But A Lot Of Foolish Ideas Have Died There.

Speech Is An Arrangement Of Notes That Will Never Be Played Again.

Switzerland Is A Country Where Very Few Things Begin, But Many Things End.

I'm A Romantic; A Sentimental Person Thinks Things Will Last, A Romantic Person Hopes Against Hope That They Won't.

I Like People And I Like Them To Like Me, But I Wear My Heart Where God Put It, On The Inside.

My Idea Is Always To Reach My Generation. The Wise Writer Writes For The Youth Of His Own Generation, The Critics Of The Next, And The Schoolmasters Of Ever Afterward.

It Is In The Thirties That We Want Friends. In The Forties We Know They Won't Save Us Any More Than Love Did.

The Easiest Way To Get A Reputation Is To Go Outside The Fold, Shout Around For A Few Years As A Violent Atheist Or A Dangerous Radical, And Then Crawl Back To The Shelter.

Some Men Have A Necessity To Be Mean, As If They Were Exercising A Faculty Which They Had To Partially Neglect Since Early Childhood.

In A Real Dark Night Of The Soul, It Is Always Three O'clock In The Morning, Day After Day.

A Great Social Success Is A Pretty Girl Who Plays Her Cards As Carefully As If She Were Plain.

No Such Thing As A Man Willing To Be Honest - That Would Be Like A Blind Man Willing To See.

Never Confuse A Single Defeat With A Final Defeat.

There Are No Second Acts In American Lives.

What'll We Do With Ourselves This Afternoon? And The Day After That, And The Next Thirty Years?

All Good Writing Is Swimming Under Water And Holding Your Breath.

The Faces Of Most American Women Over Thirty Are Relief Maps Of Petulant And Bewildered Unhappiness.

For Awhile After You Quit Keats All Other Poetry Seems To Be Only Whistling Or Humming.

After All, Life Hasn't Much To Offer Except Youth, And I Suppose For Older People, The Love Of Youth In Others.

To A Profound Pessimist About Life, Being In Danger Is Not Depressing.

It's Not A Slam At You When People Are Rude, It's A Slam At The People They've Met Before.

Vitality Shows In Not Only The Ability To Persist But The Ability To Start Over.

You Can Stroke People With Words.

Her Body Calculated To A Millimeter To Suggest A Bud Yet Guarantee A Flower.

His Was A Great Sin Who First Invented Consciousness. Let Us Lose It For A Few Hours.

Great Art Is The Contempt Of A Great Man For Small Art.

Though The Jazz Age Continued It Became Less And Less An Affair Of Youth. The Sequel Was Like A Children's Party Taken Over By The Elders.

At Eighteen Our Convictions Are Hills From Which We Look; At Forty-five They Are Caves In Which We Hide.

Trouble Has No Necessary Connection With Discouragement. Discouragement Has A Germ Of Its Own, As Different From Trouble As Arthritis Is Different From A Stiff Joint.

The Idea That To Make A Man Work You've Got To Hold Gold In Front Of His Eyes Is A Growth, Not An Axiom. We've Done That For So Long That We've Forgotten There's Any Other Way.

To Write It, It Took Three Months; To Conceive It Three Minutes; To Collect The Data In It All My Life.

First You Take A Drink, Then The Drink Takes A Drink, Then The Drink Takes You.

The Compensation Of A Very Early Success Is A Conviction That Life Is A Romantic Matter. In The Best Sense One Stays Young.

Action Is Character.

Genius Is The Ability To Put Into Effect What Is On Your Mind.

No Decent Career Was Ever Founded On A Public.

A Big Man Has No Time Really To Do Anything But Just Sit And Be Big.

The World, As A Rule, Does Not Live On Beaches And In Country Clubs.