Read the best collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes, sayings, and messages about love, beauty, worth, life, and dreams are timeless and have inspired generations of readers.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, commonly known as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, and his works have had a profound impact on the literary landscape of his time and beyond.
His literary career began in the 1920s, a period known as the “Roaring Twenties,” which was characterized by cultural, social, and economic changes.
His debut novel, “This Side of Paradise,” published in 1920, became an instant success and made him an overnight literary sensation.
However, it was his novel, “The Great Gatsby,” published in 1925, that cemented his place in American literature.
His writing style is often characterized by its lyricism, its exploration of the human psyche, and its deep-seated themes of disillusionment, loss, and the corruption of the American Dream.
His works often reflected the decadence and excess of the Jazz Age, but they also delved deeply into the human condition, exploring themes of love, loss, and the search for identity.
Throughout his life, Fitzgerald was known for his wit and intelligence, and he left behind a legacy of memorable quotes that continue to inspire readers today.
Despite his tragic and untimely death at the age of 44 in 1940, Fitzgerald’s legacy lives on, and his works continue to inspire and captivate readers around the world.
Top 10 F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes
- “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
- “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
Best Quotes By F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “It takes two to make an accident.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Never confuse activity with action.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “No matter how low you go, there’s always an unexplored basement.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.”
- “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
- “I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “The ability to hold two competing thoughts in one’s mind and still be able to function is the mark of a superior mind.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I never blame failure – there are too many complicated situations in life – but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
Famous F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes About Love
- “Can’t repeat the past?… Why of course you can!” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “You have a place in my heart no one else ever could have.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “And in the end, we were all just humans…Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
- “The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last – the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “It took him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I’m not sentimental – I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last–the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
Quotes By F. Scott Fitzgerald On Life
- “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
- “Here’s to alcohol, the rose-colored glasses of life.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.”
- “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
- “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
Deep F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes
- “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people’s lives.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
- “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “The greatest profound pain is cased by, and is the result of our own illusions, fantasies and dreams.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
- “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
- “Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally, it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever anymore. That’s the last and worst thing it does.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
Inspiring F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes
These quotes, and many others like them, continue to resonate with readers around the world and are a testament to Fitzgerald’s enduring legacy as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
- “All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Switzerland is a country where very few things begin, but many things end.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
- “Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.”
- “A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.”
- “It is not merely enough to have the ability to be persistant, you must also have the ability to start over.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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
- “You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
More About F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Life
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest twentieth-century writers.
Fitzgerald’s personal life was also marked by tumultuous relationships, alcoholism, and financial struggles, which he often drew from to create complex characters and themes in his works.
He is best known for his novel The Great Gatsby, which is considered to be a classic of American literature.
During his lifetime, Fitzgerald wrote four novels, five collections of short stories, and numerous other works.
His novels are This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.
His most famous short stories include “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, “The Legend of Sleeping Hollow”, and “The Diamond as Large as the Ritz”.
Fitzgerald’s novels and stories are characterized by their insight into the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. His work is also known for its beautiful prose and sense of nostalgia.
Fitzgerald’s legacy continues to this day, and his work is required reading in many high school and college literature courses.
If we have missed some quotes, share them with us in the comment section below and we shall be happy to add them to the list.
Feel free to share these famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes with friends and family on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Pinterest, and more to spread some wise words of wisdom.
