Great Throughts Treasury

"But I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it."

"But it was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too ready to take dreams, long forgotten, from one era to another."

"But it was too late. He had angered Providence by resisting too many temptations. There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, had wasted earth."

"But some day I'm going to find somebody and love him and love him and never let him go."

"But the rest offended her - and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion."

"But there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering."

"But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age."

"But they were frightened at his survivant will, once a will to live, now become a will to die."

"But to be included in Dick DiverÂ’s world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years. He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its effect. Then, without caution, lest the first bloom of the relation wither, he opened the gate to his amusing world. So long as they subscribed to it completely, their happiness was his preoccupation, but at the first flicker of doubt as to its all- inclusiveness he evaporated before their eyes, leaving little communicable memory of what he had said or done."

"But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room."

"But you can love more than just one person, can't you?"

"By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish."

"Calmness wasnÂ’t an end in itself."

"Can't repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!"

"Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh."

"Celtic you'll live and Celtic you'll die."

"Character is plot, plot is character."

"C'mon, Amory. Your romance is over You don't know how true you spoke. No idea. 'At's the whole trouble"

"Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him — he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal."

"Compromising with events time moves along."

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

"Centuries have elapsed by the time an Amazon finally be able to grasp the fact that he only pride vulnerable, but once you megrobbantják this will be fragile the whole man and the egg."

"Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor."

"Daddy's girl. Was it a 'itty-bitty bravekins and did it suffer? Oooooo-tweet, de tweetest thing, wasn't she dest too tweet? Before her tiny fist the forces of lust and corruption rolled away; nay, the very march of destiny stopped; inevitably became inevitable, syllogism, dialectic, all rationality fell away"

"Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air."

"Debut: the first time a young girl is seen drunk in public."

"Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke."

"Dear, don't think of getting out of bed yet. I've always suspected that early rising in early life makes one nervous."

"Dick tried to plunge over the Alpine crevasse between the sexes."

"Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot."

"Dick walked beside her, feeling her unhappiness, and wanting to drink the rain that touched her cheek."

"Dishonesty is something that women can not criticize seriously."

"Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!"

"Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?"

"Doctor Dougall was wrong. It was temperamentally impossible for Amory to get the best marks in school."

"Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.'"

"Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable."

"Don't let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your personality, as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p.m."

"Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty."

"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."

"Even in the afternoon there must have been times when Daisy had failed to stand up to the dream, not his fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion that went beyond Daisy, whatever . Gatsby had thrown himself into with creative passion, continuing to increase it, and decorated with lively every feather that the wind sospingesse at hand. There is no fire or frost that challenge what a man can accumulate in your heart."

"Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished."

"Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgement,' Gloria had said. 'It's the sum of all your judgements that counts."

"Even when the east excited me most, even when I was keenly aware of its superiority to the broad, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which only spared children and the very old-even then it had always for me a quality of distortion."

"Draw your chair up close to the precipice and I'll tell you a story!"

"Dot,' he whispered uncomfortably, 'you'll forget. Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know-- because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it turned to dust in my hands."

"Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairyÂ’s wing."

"During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard of no more."

"Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

"EverybodyÂ’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness."