With the publishing of his novel "This Side of Paradise" in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald immediately rose to the top of the literary world, becoming one of the primary storytelling virtuoso's of the Jazz Age -- a term he coined himself to define an era in American History characterized by an excess of money and alcohol. For a while, it seemed like America would never sober up, but then the Depression struck. And with one parched kiss the money, the alcohol, evaporated, along with Fitzgerald's career.

By the time the author passed away in 1940, all his books were out of print, and despite being hired as a screenwriter in Hollywood, only once did his name ever appear in a movie credit. Plummeting from the heights of renown into the destitute crevices and valleys of the forgotten, Fitzgerald's name seemed destined to remain as one omitted from the pages of history, but it was not so.

Rediscovered in the 1950's, F. Scott Fitzgerald to this day is now regarded as one of the most important figures in the canon of American Literature. Revered on a level parallel to that of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, scholars and critics herald Fitzgerald as one of the foremost pioneers of Literary Modernism, and his novel "The Great Gatsby" has been dubbed "The Great American Novel" -- the single highest praise set aside for any book composed by an author tracing origins to the United States. Here are five quotes that were taken from Fitzgerald's work that cement his status as a literary icon, and an enduring inspiration to aspiring writers in the contemporary era:

Although F. Scott Fitzgerald has long past back into a past where all memories ceaselessly pass further into, his books, his words remain. To enthrall, to remind, and to guide us. Through a past wrought from great beauty and ruin. And into a future where an even greater, brighter beauty springs from places long crumbled and broken. Even as they must remain longed for.