Quotes About Aspiration

Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour.

The world is so overgrown that it can't lift its own fingers, and I was planning to be such an important finger-

What are you going to do? Can't say - run for president, write - Greenwich Village? Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink.

Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...

It had seemed as close as a star to the moon.

If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing is to be a great criminal.

to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning-

The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.

Gatsby credeva nella luce verde, nel futuro orgastico che anno dopo anno si ritira davanti a noi. Ieri c'è sfuggito, ma non importa: domani correremo più forte, allungheremo di più le braccia ... e un bel mattino... Così continuiamo a remare, barche contro corrente, risospinti senza posa nel passato.

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. - Nick Carraway

It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being. This, too, was quite characteristic of Amory.

he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality.

He used to think that he wanted to be goos, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in.

he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. ...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.

My life... my life has got to be like this. It's got to keep going up.

In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality

It seemed a tragedy to want nothing – and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashed what is was – some path of hope to lead him towards what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.

He felt that to succeed here the idea of success must grasp and limit his mind.

He had come a long way to this blue 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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you want to be prominent, get out and try for something.

And he could not tell why the struggle was worthwhile, why he had determined to use the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed... He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. 'I know myself,' he cried, 'But that is all.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired

Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.