I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
More Quotes from Ernest Hemingway:
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
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
Ernest Hemingway
I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something someone else has done though you might have done it if they hadn't.
Ernest Hemingway
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
Ernest Hemingway
I know the night is not the same as the day that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.
Ernest Hemingway
Never confuse movement with action.
Ernest Hemingway
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Based on Topics: Government Quotes, Literature Quotes, Loyalty Quotes, Patriotism Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Work & Career QuotesNot to transmit an experience is to betray it.
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If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
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A decent boldness ever meets with friends.
Homer