24 Iconic Jay Gatsby Quotes From Fitzgerald's Old Sport

The original name of the iconic Jay Gatsby is James Gatz.

Jay Gatsby is a tragic character in the novel 'The Great Gatsby' written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925. It was adapted into a movie in 2013, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

The novel has made its way in literature as a well-known classic, despite being initially unsuccessful upon publication. In the novel, Jay Gatsby is a self-made billionaire and owner of a luxurious mansion, where he often organizes extravagant parties. The narrator of the novel, Nick Carraway, gradually unpacks Jay Gatsby as a wide-eyed innocent man who is hopeful and loves to dream grandly. Gradually, the readers discover the story of Gatsby helplessly pursuing Daisy Buchanan, who he fell in love with in his youth. However, Daisy seems to have moved on with her life and married a wealthy man named Tom. With a lot of twists and turns, the novel ultimately ends with the demise of Gatsby and the sudden disappearance of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who moved away from Long Island.

Gatsby has one catchphrase that he loves using: 'Old sport!'. Similarly, Gatsby's single most infamous line is arguable 'Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!'. The novel famously ends with the line, 'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'
 

Here, you will find some of Jay Gatsby's American Dream quotes and more famous quotes also from the character, including the famous line he says about himself: 'I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love...!'

1. 'Oh, hello, old sport!'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

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

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

3. 'Her voice is full of money.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

4. 'I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love...'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby', screenplay by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce.

5. '‘I thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

6. 'Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s all wiped out forever.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

7. 'It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That’s why I can’t really call myself an Oxford man.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

8. 'She never loved you, do you hear?' he cried. 'She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart, she never loved any one except for me!'

- 'The Great Gatsby'.

9. 'If there's anything that you want, just ask for it, old sport.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

10. 'I’m only 32... I might still be a great man if I could only forget that I once lost Daisy.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby', screenplay by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce.

11. 'I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

12. '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 then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'

13. 'In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

14. 'I thought you ought to know something about my life. ought to know something about me. I didn’t want you to think I was just some nobody.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

15. 'I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me.'

- Jay Gatsby, 'The Great Gatsby'.

In this section, we have collected 'The Great Gatsby' Jay Gatsby quotes that will tell you more about the famous character. Read on to find some of the best quotes about Jay Gatsby. If you liked reading these quotes, you can check out these Tom Buchanan quotes for more.

16. 'If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

17. 'In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

18. 'I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.'

- Nick Carraway, 'The Great Gatsby'.

19. '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.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

20. 'He was never quite still; there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a handle.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

21. 'The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

22. 'It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

23. 'He had 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.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby'.

24. 'I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.'

- Nick Carraway, 'The Great Gatsby'.

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Second Image credit: Debby Wong / Shutterstock.com