Selected Quotes By Ernest Hemingway
"Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
Ernest Hemingway, Anger and Fighting
"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is."
Ernest Hemingway, Wealth
"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."
Ernest Hemingway, Anger and Fighting
"The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"All things truly wicked start from innocence."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it."
Ernest Hemingway, Goals
"When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together." Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me. Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"In order to write about life first you must live it."
Ernest Hemingway, Art, Life
"I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself."
Ernest Hemingway, Happiness
"Write hard and clear about what hurts."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."
Ernest Hemingway, Goals
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"And you'll always love me won't you?
Yes.
And the rain won't make any difference?
No."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering."
Ernest Hemingway, Courage
"Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me."
Ernest Hemingway, Courage
"Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"Never confuse movement with action."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
Ernest Hemingway, Courage, Life
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
Ernest Hemingway, Anger and Fighting
"Courage is grace under pressure."
Ernest Hemingway, Courage
"All thinking men are atheists."
Ernest Hemingway, Belief
"Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I drink to make other people more interesting."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again." "Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?" "Yes. I want to ruin you." "Good," I said. "That's what I want too."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"The first draft of anything is shit."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too."
Ernest Hemingway, Love
"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
Ernest Hemingway, Life
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
Ernest Hemingway, Happiness, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
Ernest Hemingway, Art
"There is no friend as loyal as a book."