The Great Gatsby Quotes
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Source: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Context
There you have it, Shmoopers. This is the oh-so-famous final line of the end-all-be-all of American literature: The Great Gatsby.
It's the grand finale of Nick's musings on Gatsby's life and death, and here's what he's thinking: while Gatsby felt so close to his dream of Daisy, she was actually still far away, trapped in his past.
According to Nick, we are all Gatsby in a way, naively striving for the unattainable—some dream we had when we were young. We will never reach the "orgastic future" we think is coming, but still we try...again and again.
Where you've heard it
It isn't exactly a conversation starter, but this quote's popularity makes it a favorite among academics who need a snazzy title for their dissertation on the death of the American dream, or among people on Tumblr who like to put important-sounding quotes on pretty backgrounds.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
This Big-Deal quote expresses a Big Idea with words that are Hardly Conversational. When's the last time you've said "borne" with an E...and without a U?
So, yeah, if you're dropping this thing willy nilly, you're going to sound a little pretentious. Lucky for you, it's one of the most famous lines ever written in 20th-century American literature, so at least you won't come off as a know-it-all, too.