《了不起的盖茨比》是美国作家弗·司各特·菲茨杰拉德创作的一部以以20世纪20年代的纽约市及长岛为背景的中篇小说，出版于1925年。

主人公詹姆斯·卡兹本是北达科他州的一个贫穷的农家子弟，自幼梦想做个出人头地的大人物。经过一番努力，他终于步步高升，并更名为杰伊·盖茨比。他在一个军训营里任中尉时，爱上了南方的大家闺秀黛茜·费。可是当他戴着军功勋章在战争结束后从海外归来时，黛茜已嫁给了一位来自芝加哥的、体格健壮、极为富有但举止粗鲁的纨绔子弟汤姆·布坎农，沉醉于爱情梦幻中的盖茨比艰苦创业，由一个贫穷的军官奋斗成为百万富翁。他在长岛西端买下了一幢豪华别墅，与住在东端的布坎农夫妇隔海湾相望。他的府第每晚灯火通明，成群的宾客饮酒纵乐。他唯一的愿望是希望看到分别了五年的情人黛茜，当他们重逢时，盖茨比以为时光可以倒流，重温旧梦，但久而久之，他发现黛茜远不像他梦想的人，可是这种醒悟还没多久，黛茜开车碾死了丈夫的情妇，汤姆嫁祸于盖茨比，盖茨比终于被害，黛茜居然没来送葬：叙述者尼克由此看透了上层社会有钱人的冷酷残忍和居心险恶，离开纽约，回到了中西部的故乡。

书摘：

1. 每当你觉得想要批评什么人的时候，你切要记着，这个世界上的人并非都具备你禀有的条件。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.

2.人们的善恶感一生下来就有差异。　A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.

3.人们的品行有的好像建筑在坚硬的岩石上，有的好像建筑在泥沼里，不过超过一定的限度，我就不在乎它建在什么之上了。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.

4.这时，天色已经暗了下来，我们这排高高地俯瞰着城市的灯火通明的窗户，一定让街头偶尔抬头眺望的人感到了，人类的秘密也有其一份在这里吧，我也是这样的一个过路人，举头望着诧异着。我既在事内又在事外，几杯永无枯竭的五彩纷呈的生活所吸引，同时又被其排斥着。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.

5. 他理解体谅地笑了——这笑比理解和体谅有的含义。这是那种不多见的使你忐忑不安的情绪能很快地平静下来的笑，这种笑容人的一生中顶多能碰上四五次。它 先是再一刹那间面对——或者说似乎在面对——整个外部世界，然后他就全副心神地倾注到你的身上，对你充满一种不可抵御的偏爱之情。它对你的理解恰是你想被 人理解的那么多，它对你的信任恰像你平时愿意对自己所信任到的那种程度，它叫你确信它对你的印象恰是你所希望造成的那么多。He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, which 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. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

6.每个人都认为他自己至少具有一种主要的美德，我的美德是：我是我所结识过的少有的几个诚实人中间的一个。Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues and this

7.世界上只有被追求者和追求者，忙碌者和疲惫者。There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

8.他怀着一种创造性的情感将自己全身心地投入到它的中间，不断地为它增添内容，用飘浮到他路上的每一根漂亮羽毛去装扮它。有谁知道在一个人的波诡云谲的心里，能蓄下多少火一样的激情和新鲜的念头。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.

9.他是上帝之子，如果这个词还有什么别的含义的话，这里只能用它的本意，他要为天父的事业而献身，服务于这一博大而又粗俗、浮华而又美丽的事业。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.

10.许多种情感鱼贯似地流露到她的脸上，仿佛正被冲洗着的相纸一点一点地显示出物景那样。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.　11.我整夜没睡；雾笛声一个劲儿在桑德海湾上凄恻地鸣响，我辗转反侧，像生了病一样，理不清哪些是狰狞的现实，哪些是可怕的梦魇。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.

12.她消逝在了她那奢华的房子里，消逝在了她那富裕充实的生活之中，留给盖茨比的——只是无有。She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.

13.盖茨比比以前任何时候都深切地感受到了财富所能赐予青春的魅力和它所能持有的神秘，感受到了锦衣靓饰的清新怡人，意识到了像银子似的发着熠熠光彩的黛西，安然傲倨于劳苦人为生活所做的拼死斗争之上。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.

　14.从这话里，除了能窥测出他对这一无法衡量出的情事之紧张的思考程度，还能推断出什么呢？What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured?

15. 如果这一情况真实的话，他那时一定感觉到了他已失去了他原来的那个温馨世界，感觉到了他为这么长时间只活在一个梦里所付出的高昂代价。他那时一定举头望过 令人恐怖的叶片，看到了一个陌生的天宇，他一定不由得颤栗了，当他发现玫瑰原来长得是那么的奇形怪状，照在疏疏落落的草叶上的阳光是那么粗鄙。这是一个没 有真实的物的新世界，在那里可怜的鬼魂们四处随风飘荡，他们像呼吸空气那样吮吸着梦幻。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 . . .

16.我三十岁了，如果我再年轻五岁的话，我说不定会自己欺骗自己把这称之为美德的。I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.

17. 月光渐渐升高，显得渺小的房屋开始融入这溶溶的月色中去，此时我的眼前逐渐浮现出这座古老的岛屿当年在荷兰航海者眼中的那种妖娆风姿——一个新世界的翠绿 欲滴胸膛。它那现在不复存在的林木（为修造盖茨比住过的这座别墅被砍伐掉了）曾经温馨地煽起人类最后的也是最伟大的梦想；在那短暂的神奇时刻里，人类一定 在这片大陆前屏住了呼吸，情不自禁地耽入到他既不理解也没希冀过的美的享受之中，在历史上最后一次面对面地欣赏着，这一与他的感受惊奇的力量相称的景观。And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

18.他经过慢慢追索才来到了这片蓝色的草地上，他的梦想一定已经离得他如此之近以至于他几乎不会抓不到它了。他不知道他的梦想已经被甩在了他的身后，已经隐藏在了城市以外的冥蒙之中，在那里共和国的黑暗的土地在黑夜中延伸着……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.

19.为此，我们将顶住那不停地退回到过去的潮头奋力向前。

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.