Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Writing is a hard business...but nothing makes you feel better.

Religion is the opium of the poor.

The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.

You know I don't love any one but you. You shouldn't mind because some one else loved me.

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later.

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

The smallest coffins are the heaviest.

In a power hungry, power worshipping society, men label themselves atheist.

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.

Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?

And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.

All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.

I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring.

Find the best writers, pay them to write, and avoid typos at all costs.

I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.

Never fall in love?" "Always," said the count. "I am always in love.

There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.

I don't want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend.

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.

Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once.

If you have a success, you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I wouldn't kill myself. When a man is in rebellion against death, as I am in rebellion against death, he gets pleasure out of taking to himself one of the godlike attributes; that of giving it.

Easy writing makes hard reading.

Everything is your fault if you're any damn good.

You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.

There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.

The best way to become a writer is to go off and write.

Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.

I drink to make other people more interesting.

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

No one you love is ever truly lost.

To be able to say: I loved this person, we had a hell of a nice time together, it's over but in a way it will never be over and I do know that I for sure loved this person, to be able to say that and mean it, that's rare. That's rare and valuable.

The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty bothers.

It is appearances, characteristics and performance that make a man love an airplane, and they, are what put emotion into one. You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, nor any before nor any after, that is as lovely as a great airplane, and men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. A man has only one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely plane he loses it to, there his heart will ever be.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.

I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

Rereading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.

Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do.

I am always in love.

Please tell me what can I do. There must be something I can do

The only thing that can ruin a good day is people.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way.