《了不起的蓋茨比》講述尼克從中西部故鄉來到紐約，在他住所旁邊正是本書主人公蓋茨比的豪華宅第。這裏每晚都在舉行盛大的宴會。尼克和蓋茨比相識，故事就這樣開始了。
了不起的蓋茨比經典臺詞，了不起的是他的愛與執着。
1、There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.
世界上只有被追求者和追求者，忙碌者和疲憊者。
2、All the bright precious things fade so fast…and they don't come back.
所有的光鮮亮麗都敵不過時間，並且一去不復返。
3、A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.
人們的善惡感一生下來就有差異。
4、So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
爲此，我們將頂住那不停地退回到過去的潮頭奮力向前。
5、She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.
她消逝在了她那奢華的房子裏，消逝在了她那富裕充實的生活之中，留給蓋茨比的——是無有。
6、What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured?
從這話裏，除了能窺測出他對這一無法衡量出的情事之緊張的思考程度，還能推斷出什麼呢?
7、Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.
人們的品行有的好像建築在堅硬的岩石上，有的好像建築在泥沼裏，不過超過一定的限度，我就不在乎它建在什麼之上了。
8、Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.
每個人都認爲他自己至少具有一種主要的美德，我的美德是：我是我所結識過的少有的幾個誠實人中間的一個。
9、Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
每當你覺得想要批評什麼人的時候，你切要記着，這個世界上的人並非都具備你稟有的條件。
10、I couldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams.
我整夜沒睡;霧笛聲一個勁兒在桑德海灣上悽惻地鳴響，我輾轉反側，像生了病一樣，理不清哪些是猙獰的現實，哪些是可怕的夢魘。
11、So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.
許多種情感魚貫似地流露到她的臉上，彷彿正被沖洗着的相紙一點一點地顯示出物景那樣。
12、He was a son of God-a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that-and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.
他是上帝之子，如果這個詞還有什麼別的含義的話，這裏只能用它的本意，他要爲天父的事業而獻身，服務於這一博大而又粗俗、浮華而又美麗的事業。
13、It eluded us then,but that's no matter to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…and one fine morning. So we beat on,boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly nto the past.
我們繼續奮力向前，逆水行舟，被不斷地向後推，直至回到往昔歲月。
14、Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
蓋茨比比以前任何時候都深切地感受到了財富所能賜予青春的魅力和它所能持有的神祕，感受到了錦衣靚飾的清新怡人，意識到了像銀子似的發着熠熠光彩的黛西，安然傲倨於勞苦人爲生活所做的拼死鬥爭之上。
15、I'm thirty. I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
我三十歲了，如果我再年輕五歲的話，我說不定會自己欺騙自己把這稱之爲美德的。
16、He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
他懷着一種創造性的情感將自己全身心地投入到它的中間，不斷地爲它增添內容，用飄浮到他路上的每一根漂亮羽毛去裝扮它。有誰知道在一個人的波詭雲譎的心裏，能蓄下多少火一樣的.激情和新鮮的念頭。
17、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, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
他經過慢慢追索纔來到了這片藍色的草地上，他的夢想一定已經離得他如此之近以至於他幾乎不會抓不到它了。他不知道他的夢想已經被甩在了他的身後，已經隱藏在了城市以外的冥濛之中，在那裏共和國的黑暗的土地在黑夜中延伸着……
18、Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
這時，天色已經暗了下來，我們這排高高地俯瞰着城市的燈火通明的窗戶，一定讓街頭偶爾擡頭眺望的人感到了，人類的祕密也有其一份在這裏吧，我也是這樣的一個過路人，舉頭望着詫異着。我既在事內又在事外，幾杯永無枯竭的五彩紛呈的生活所吸引，同時又被其排斥着。
19、If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about .
如果這一情況真實的話，他那時一定感覺到了他已失去了他原來的那個溫馨世界，感覺到了他爲這麼長時間只活在一個夢裏所付出的高昂代價。他那時一定舉頭望過 令人恐怖的葉片，看到了一個陌生的天宇，他一定不由得顫慄了，當他發現玫瑰原來長得是那麼的奇形怪狀，照在疏疏落落的草葉上的陽光是那麼粗鄙。這是一個沒 有真實的物的新世界，在那裏可憐的鬼魂們四處隨風飄蕩，他們像呼吸空氣那樣吮吸着夢幻。
