F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes about Past

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.

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

Regret, Past, Lost

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.1469, e-artnow

She saw him the first day on board, and then her heart sank into her shoes as she realized at last how much she wanted him. No matter what his past was, no matter what he had done. Which was not to say that she would ever let him know, but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone she had ever met, that all other men seemed pale beside him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Heart, Past, Men

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.1783, e-artnow

Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Happiness, Past, Afternoon

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.353, e-artnow

Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past, Great Gatsby Important, Great Gatsby Gatsby

"The Great Gatsby". Book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.

Boredom is not an end-product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You've got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Art, Past, Bores You

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.157, New Directions Publishing

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Time, Memories, Past

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.50, New Directions Publishing

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Confused, Past, Ideas

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.69, e-artnow

Amory thought how it was only the past that seemed strange and unbelievable.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past, Strange, Unbelievable

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.270, e-artnow

There was even a recurrent idea in America about an education that would leave out history and the past, that should be a sort of equipment for aerial adventure, weighed down by none of the stowaways of inheritance or tradition.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Adventure, Past, Ideas

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated)”, p.2384, Delphi Classics

I must hold in balance the sense of the futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle; the conviction of the inevitability of failure and still the determination to 'succeed'-and, more than these, the contradiction between the dead hand of the past and the high intentions of the future. If I could do this through the common ills-domestic, professional and personal-then the ego would continue as an arrow shot from nothingness to nothingness with such force that only gravity would bring it to earth at last.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Determination, Struggle, Past

F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L. W. West (2005). “Fitzgerald: My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940”, p.140, Cambridge University Press

Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past, Hands, House

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.85, Atlântico Press

He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past, Ideas, Gone

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ruth Prigozy (2008). “The Great Gatsby”, p.88, Oxford University Press

It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past, Men, House

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.657, e-artnow

You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past, Great Gatsby Love, Great Gatsby American Dream

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.83, Oldcastle Books

One hurries through, even though there's time; the past, the continent, is behind; the future is the glowing mouth in the side of the ship; the dim, turbulent alley is too confusedly the present.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Time, Past, Glowing

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.471, e-artnow