Top 500 F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Motivational Quotes, Perseverance Quotes, Failure Quotes, Spirituality Quotes

2. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. “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 that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. “Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

5. “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.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Science Quotes

6. “You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

7. “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

8. “To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times, what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks but a special heart that listens.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

9. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

10. “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

11. “The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

12. “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Romance Quotes

13. “I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Philosophy Quotes

14. “Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Philosophy Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes

15. “I’m not sure what I’ll do, but – well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Mind Quotes

16. “I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

17. “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

18. “I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

19. “Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Moving On Quotes

20. “I never blame failure – there are too many complicated situations in life – but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Effort Quotes

21. “Don’t forget who you are and where you come from.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

22. “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Hero Quotes

23. “Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Quotes About Trying

24. “For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

25. “I’m a cynical idealist.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

26. “You have a place in my heart no one else ever could have.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

27. “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

28. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. “I hope you live a life you’re proud of.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

30. “I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

31. “Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

32. “You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known – and even that is an understatement.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

33. “His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

34. “Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

35. “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

36. “Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

37. “Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

38. “Forgotten is forgiven.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

39. “He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

40. “You are mysterious, I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

41. “Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Featured in: Book Quotes

42. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

43. “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

Featured in: Growth Quotes, Quotes About Childhood

44. “Actually that’s my secret – I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

45. “Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

46. “Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know – because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

47. “Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

48. “I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

49. “Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time. – The Great Gatsby.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

50. “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.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald