Ernest Hemingway Quotes

I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.

Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.

I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.

you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

For what are we born if not to aid one another?

Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.

You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

All thinking men are atheists.

Modern life ... is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

Never mistake motive for action.

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

One cat just leads to another.

When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely.

This is a good place," he said. "There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.

When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?

The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.

There's no one thing that's true. It's all true.

Until the dead are buried they change somewhat in appearance each day. The color change in Caucasian races is from white to yellow, to yellow-green, to black. If left long enough in the heat the flesh comes to resemble coal-tar, especially where it has been broken or torn, and it has quite a visible tarlike iridescence. The dead grow larger each day until sometimes they become quite too big for their uniforms, filling these until they seem blown tight enough to burst. The individual members may increase in girth to an unbelievable extent and faces fill as taut and globular as balloons.

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought

Some people, when they hear an echo, think they originated the sound.

Religion is like an ice cold whiskey on a hot day.

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.

I never liked to hunt, you know. There was always the danger of having a horse fall on you.

No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.

But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.

Keep right on lying to me. That's what I want you to do.

I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

One cat just leads to another. The place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

First, there must be talent. . .Then there must be discipline. . .Then there must be. . .and absolute conscience. . .to prevent faking.

What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

Most people never listen.

There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.