Ernest Hemingway Quotes

There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing!

To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

[Never give up hope. Never give in to pessimism. Never despair.] No horse named Morbid ever won a race!

Anyone can be a fisherman in May.

A writer is like a gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like any government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.

To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it.

It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta.

I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be

How do you tell a valuable French book?' 'First there are the pictures. Then it is a question of the quality of the pictures. Then it is the binding. If a book is good, the owner will have it bound properly. All books in English are bound, but bound badly. There is no way of judging them.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

If a writer stops observing, he is finished.

You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.

I'm not advocating the strenuous life for everyone or trying to say it's the choice form of life. Anyone who's had the luck or misfortune to be an athlete has to keep his body in shape. The body and mind are closely coordinated. Fattening of the body can lead to fattening of the mind. I would be tempted to say that it can lead to fattening of the soul, but I don't know anything about the soul.

We think. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates war. There is a class that control a country that is stupid and down not realise anything and never can. That is why we have this war. Also they make money out of it.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.

When you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.

My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.

The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely. I will be. Don't worry.

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. Come let us fart in the home. There is no art in a fart. Still a fart may not be artless. Let us fart and artless fart in the home.

The only decent bone in her body was mine.

I am so in love with you that there isn’t anything else.

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

A man does not exist until he is drunk.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body.

A cat has absolute honesty.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

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.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Before you quit, you have to try

Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.

Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure.

It's a town you come to for a short time.

(World War I) was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.

A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.

The fools think I am writing algebra but what I am really writing is geometry.

If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.

Having books published is very destructive to writing.

I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.

If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.

In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.

Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.

How lazily the sun goes down in Granada, it hides beneath the water, it conceals in the Alhambra!

Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa.

Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practice in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in this own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol.