- “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth. “ --Nick Carraway
- ”"I told that boy about the ice.' Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "'These people! You have to keep after them all the time.'"
- “Instead of rambling, this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the country-side-- East Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety”
- “‘Who is this Gatsby anyhow?’ demanded Tom suddenly. ‘Some big bootlegger?'"
- "They were careless people... They smashed up thing 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"