Quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald

About F. Scott Fitzgerald:

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is 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. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known), and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other peopl...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

But this can’t be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? To bony women? To women with scrawny cheeks?

F. Scott Fitzgerald

An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I became bored - that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

There was not a moving up into vacated places; there was simply an anachronistic staying on between a vanishing past and an incalculable future.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Character is plot, plot is character.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Courage is a sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I found something! Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I am glad you are happy--but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I mean the women who, without any of the prerogatives of youth and beauty, demand continual slavery from their men....They sit back complacently and watch their husbands slave for them; and, without furnishing any of the pleasantries of life for thei...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Deep in his heart, he wondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knew that he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his own weakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; that often when he raged at...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

For what it's worth: it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you find you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author Bio

  • NameF. Scott Fitzgerald
  • DescriptionAmerican author of novels and short stories
  • AliasesFrancis Scott Fitzgerald; Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
  • BornSeptember 24, 1896
  • DiedDecember 21, 1940
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Short Story Writer; Screenwriter
  • WorksThe Great Gatsby