The Great Gatsby Key Quotes

Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby was symbolic and manifest of all the pre-crash hubris and prosperity that engulfed America at the time. The following quotes are intended to highlight and explicate some of the key themes and reveal something of the characters in The Great Gatsby.

Page 7 "Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope."

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Page 8 "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."

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Page 9 "The Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe"

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Page 9 "I was…a pathfinder, an original settler."

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Page 10 "To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their (W/E Egg) dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size."

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Page 12 "It was a body (Tom’s) capable of enormous leverage — a cruel body."

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Page 18 "’Civilization’s going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard?’"

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Page 18 "The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved." — Tom

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Page 18 "[us whites] who are the dominant race" — Tom

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Page 22 "I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything…Sophisticated — God, I’m sophisticated!" — Daisy

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Page 26 "This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat…"

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Page 32 "everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it"

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Page 47 "What realism! Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"

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Page 48 "I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something…