《了不起的蓋茨比》是美國作家弗·司各特·菲茨杰拉德創作的一部以以20世紀20年代的紐約市及長島為背景的中篇小說，出版于1925年。
主人公詹姆斯·卡茲本是北達科他州的一個貧窮的農家子弟，自幼夢想做個出人頭地的大人物。經過一番努力，他終于步步高升，并更名為杰伊·蓋茨比。他在一個軍訓營里任中尉時，愛上了南方的大家閨秀黛茜·費。可是當他戴著軍功勛章在戰爭結束后從海外歸來時，黛茜已嫁給了一位來自芝加哥的、體格健壯、極為富有但舉止粗魯的紈绔子弟湯姆·布坎農，沉醉于愛情夢幻中的蓋茨比艱苦創業，由一個貧窮的軍官奮斗成為百萬富翁。他在長島西端買下了一幢豪華別墅，與住在東端的布坎農夫婦隔海灣相望。他的府第每晚燈火通明，成群的賓客飲酒縱樂。他唯一的愿望是希望看到分別了五年的情人黛茜，當他們重逢時，蓋茨比以為時光可以倒流，重溫舊夢，但久而久之，他發現黛茜遠不像他夢想的人，可是這種醒悟還沒多久，黛茜開車碾死了丈夫的情婦，湯姆嫁禍于蓋茨比，蓋茨比終于被害，黛茜居然沒來送葬：敘述者尼克由此看透了上層社會有錢人的冷酷殘忍和居心險惡，離開紐約，回到了中西部的故鄉。
書摘：
1. 每當你覺得想要批評什么人的時候，你切要記著，這個世界上的人并非都具備你稟有的條件。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.人們的善惡感一生下來就有差異。 A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.
3.人們的品行有的好像建筑在堅硬的巖石上，有的好像建筑在泥沼里，不過超過一定的限度，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.這時，天色已經暗了下來，我們這排高高地俯瞰著城市的燈火通明的窗戶，一定讓街頭偶爾抬頭眺望的人感到了，人類的秘密也有其一份在這里吧，我也是這樣的一個過路人，舉頭望著詫異著。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，同時又被其排斥著。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. 他理解體諒地笑了——這笑比理解和體諒有的含義。這是那種不多見的使你忐忑不安的情緒能很快地平靜下來的笑，這種笑容人的一生中頂多能碰上四五次。它 先是再一剎那間面對——或者說似乎在面對——整個外部世界，然后他就全副心神地傾注到你的身上，對你充滿一種不可抵御的偏愛之情。它對你的理解恰是你想被 人理解的那么多，它對你的信任恰像你平時愿意對自己所信任到的那種程度，它叫你確信它對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.每個人都認為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。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，忙碌者和疲憊者。There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.
8.他懷著一種創造性的情感將自己全身心地投入到它的中間，不斷地為它增添內容，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云譎的心里，能蓄下多少火一樣的激情和新鮮的念頭。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，如果這個詞還有什么別的含義的話，這里只能用它的本意，他要為天父的事業而獻身，服務于這一博大而又粗俗、浮華而又美麗的事業。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.許多種情感魚貫似地流露到她的臉上，仿佛正被沖洗著的相紙一點一點地顯示出物景那樣。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.我整夜沒睡；霧笛聲一個勁兒在桑德海灣上凄惻地鳴響，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。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.她消逝在了她那奢華的房子里，消逝在了她那富裕充實的生活之中，留給蓋茨比的——只是無有。She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.
13.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秘，感受到了錦衣靚飾的清新怡人，意識到了像銀子似的發著熠熠光彩的黛西，安然傲倨于勞苦人為生活所做的拼死斗爭之上。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.從這話里，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，感覺到了他為這么長時間只活在一個夢里所付出的高昂代價。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，他一定不由得顫栗了，當他發現玫瑰原來長得是那么的奇形怪狀，照在疏疏落落的草葉上的陽光是那么粗鄙。這是一個沒 有真實的物的新世界，在那里可憐的鬼魂們四處隨風飄蕩，他們像呼吸空氣那樣吮吸著夢幻。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為美德的。I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.
17. 月光漸漸升高，顯得渺小的房屋開始融入這溶溶的月色中去，此時我的眼前逐漸浮現出這座古老的島嶼當年在荷蘭航海者眼中的那種妖嬈風姿——一個新世界的翠綠 欲滴胸膛。它那現在不復存在的林木（為修造蓋茨比住過的這座別墅被砍伐掉了）曾經溫馨地煽起人類最后的也是最偉大的夢想；在那短暫的神奇時刻里，人類一定 在這片大陸前屏住了呼吸，情不自禁地耽入到他既不理解也沒希冀過的美的享受之中，在歷史上最后一次面對面地欣賞著，這一與他的感受驚奇的力量相稱的景觀。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.他經過慢慢追索才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于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后，已經隱藏在了城市以外的冥蒙之中，在那里共和國的黑暗的土地在黑夜中延伸著……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.為此，我們將頂住那不停地退回到過去的潮頭奮力向前。
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
