The Great Gatsby Quotes: 38 Famous Lines with Speaker, Chapter and Meaning

The Short Version

The most famous quote from The Great Gatsby is its last line, in chapter 9: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Nick Carraway says it, right after the green light passage. Below are 38 quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg text (ebook #64317), with speaker, chapter and context. The book has nine chapters.

Fair warning: the quotes from chapters 7 to 9 give away the ending.

Jump to: Most famous quote · Green light and hope · Money and class · Love and Daisy · The past · Carelessness · Nick on himself · Gatsby’s smile · By character · Old sport · Misquoted lines · Quotes table

What Is the Most Famous Quote from The Great Gatsby?

It is the last sentence of the book, in chapter 9:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — Nick, chapter 9

Gatsby is dead. On his last night in the East, Nick sits on Gatsby’s beach and thinks about the Dutch sailors who first saw the island, then about Gatsby. Just before it comes the other famous passage:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic 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 further… And one fine morning—” — Nick, chapter 9

My reading, and it is an opinion: the boats keep rowing forward, but the current wins. Gatsby’s whole plan was to go back five years and start again with Daisy, and the book ends by saying all of us are pulled the same way.

Great Gatsby Quotes About the Green Light and Hope

“a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” — Nick, chapter 1

Nick’s first sight of Gatsby, alone on his lawn at night, arms stretched toward the dark water.

“You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.” — Gatsby, chapter 5

Gatsby to Daisy, at his window, looking across the bay toward her house.

“Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” — Nick, chapter 5

With Daisy beside him, the light becomes just a light again.

“it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person” — Nick, chapter 1

Nick explains why Gatsby alone is exempt from his disgust with the East.

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.” — Nick, chapter 5

The reunion. The real Daisy cannot compete with the one he imagined.

Great Gatsby Quotes About Money and Class

“Her voice is full of money,” — Gatsby, chapter 7

Nick says Daisy has “an indiscreet voice” and stalls. Gatsby finishes the sentence.

“just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” — Nick’s father, chapter 1

The advice in the book’s first paragraph.

“This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens” — Nick, chapter 2

The grey dumping ground between West Egg and New York, where the Wilsons live.

“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.” — Tom, chapter 7

Tom in the Plaza suite, once the affair is out in the open.

“He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths” — Nick, chapter 4

Jordan has explained the house across the bay. All Gatsby asks is to meet Daisy at Nick’s.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.” — Daisy, chapter 5

Gatsby throws his shirts onto the table on the house tour.

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.” — Nick, chapter 6

Nick tells the real story of James Gatz.

Great Gatsby Quotes About Love and Daisy

“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.” — Nick, chapter 6

Gatsby’s first kiss with Daisy, five years before.

“I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” — Daisy, chapter 7

Gatsby wants her to tell Tom she never loved him. She breaks.

“I did love him once—but I loved you too.” — Daisy, chapter 7

A few lines later. In my view, this is where Gatsby starts to lose.

Great Gatsby Quotes About the Past

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” — Gatsby, chapter 6

After the party Daisy did not enjoy, Nick tells him “You can’t repeat the past.” This is the answer. Gatsby goes on: “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before”.

“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” — Daisy, chapter 7

Lunch on the hottest day of the summer.

“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” — Nick, chapter 7

Nick’s thirtieth birthday. On the drive home, Myrtle is killed.

Great Gatsby Quotes About Carelessness

“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…” — Nick, chapter 9

Tom admits he told Wilson whose car it was. Nick shakes his hand anyway.

“I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.” — Jordan, chapter 3

Nick has told her she is a rotten driver. She says other people will keep out of her way.

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I?” — Jordan, chapter 9

Nick’s last talk with Jordan. She brings back their chapter 3 conversation about driving.

“That fellow had it coming to him.” — Tom, chapter 9

Tom, defending what he told Wilson. He thinks Gatsby was driving.

“God sees everything,” — Wilson, chapter 8

Wilson, staring at the Eckleburg billboard. Michaelis: “That’s an advertisement”.

Great Gatsby Quotes Where Nick Talks About Himself

“Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.” — Nick, chapter 1

Then, a few lines later, he takes it back: “I come to the admission that it has a limit.”

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” — Nick, chapter 2

At Tom and Myrtle’s apartment party in New York.

“I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” — Nick, chapter 3

The last line of chapter 3: his one cardinal virtue.

“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.” — Nick, chapter 9

His reply when Jordan says she thought he was “an honest, straightforward person”.

Great Gatsby Quotes About Gatsby’s Smile

“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.” — Nick, chapter 3

Nick has just learned the man beside him is Gatsby.

“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” — Nick, chapter 8

The last time Nick sees Gatsby alive. Nick says it was the only compliment he ever gave him, and Gatsby’s face “broke into that radiant and understanding smile”.

“A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…” — Nick, chapter 8

Nick imagines Gatsby’s last minutes by the pool. No phone message from Daisy came, and Nick has “an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come”.

Great Gatsby Quotes by Character

Gatsby. Most of his lines are above under the green light, the past and Daisy. His first “old sport” comes at the party before Nick knows who he is, when he offers Nick a ride in his new hydroplane: “Want to go with me, old sport?” (chapter 3).

Tom. The other side of the Plaza fight:

“Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” — Tom, chapter 7

Jordan Baker. Jordan on Gatsby’s parties:

“I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” — Jordan, chapter 3

Myrtle Wilson. On meeting Tom on the train to New York:

“You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.” — Myrtle, chapter 2

Meyer Wolfshiem. He will not come to the funeral, and tells Nick why:

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,” — Wolfshiem, chapter 9

Owl Eyes. The man from the library is one of the few at the funeral. His last word on Gatsby:

“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” — Owl Eyes, chapter 9

Henry C. Gatz. Gatsby’s father, showing Nick the boyhood schedule he found in a book:

“Jimmy was bound to get ahead.” — Mr. Gatz, chapter 9

Who Says “Old Sport” in The Great Gatsby?

Gatsby. By our count of the Gutenberg text, “old sport” appears 45 times: 5 in chapter 3, 8 in chapter 4, 12 in chapter 5, 1 in chapter 6, 13 in chapter 7, 5 in chapter 8 and 1 in chapter 9, never before Nick meets Gatsby. A few chapter 7 uses are Tom mocking it (“All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that up?”). The last, in chapter 9, is Nick imagining Gatsby’s voice after his death.

Famous Lines People Misquote

I checked each of these against the text.

• “A beautiful little fool.” Daisy does say it, in chapter 1, but she is not describing herself and she is not talking to Gatsby. She tells Nick what she said when her daughter was born: “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
• “You can’t repeat the past.” That half is Nick’s line, not Gatsby’s. Gatsby’s answer is the famous part: “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” (chapter 6).
• The green light. It is Daisy’s light, at the end of the Buchanans’ dock in East Egg, not Gatsby’s. The phrase “green light” appears only five times, in chapters 1, 5 and 9.
• “Boats against the current.” The full sentence starts “So we beat on”, and it is Nick’s narration on the last page, not something Gatsby says.
• “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys.” Often posted as a Great Gatsby quote, but the sentence does not appear anywhere in the novel’s text.
• “I hate careless people.” It is Jordan, not Daisy, in chapter 3, and she follows it with “That’s why I like you.”

All 38 Quotes at a Glance

For the full story behind these lines, see the Great Gatsby chapter-by-chapter summary and the Great Gatsby book page.