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

Closing lines
Source: Quoted, The Great Gatsby (1925)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald 411
American novelist and screenwriter 1896–1940

Related quotes

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Variant: It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Source: The Great Gatsby

Anne Rice photo
John Ogilby photo

“Each thing by Destiny
So hastens to grow worse, and backward goes;
As one against a stream his Vessel rowes,
Who if by chance his arm a little slack,
The Boat in the swift Chanel hurries back.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks

Gaston Bachelard photo

“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Karl Pilkington photo

“We came from the sea originally, now we're going back in it. Don't go in it, unless you're in a boat.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 3
On Biology

Jack McDevitt photo

“If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 4 (pp. 46-47)

Theodore L. Cuyler photo
John Steinbeck photo

Related topics