“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
“People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away.”
“He smiled understandingly–much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
“It takes two to make an accident.”
“Everyone 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.”
“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me.”
“For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.”
“…and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.”
“She wanted her life shaped now, immediately–and the decision must be made by some force–of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality–that was close at hand.”
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
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