Ernest Hemingway Quotes (296 Quotes)

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.

Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.

The old man's head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution but he had little hope. It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in.

It was not brilliant bull-fighting. It was only perfect bull-fighting.

I'm not unfaithful, darling. I've plenty of faults but I'm very faithful. You'll be sick of me I'll be so faithful.

You've such a lovely temperature.

Nobody climbs on skis now and almost everybody breaks their legs but maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that sometimes, afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places.

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

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.

This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos he thought. But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.

Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well

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

A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

So if your life trades seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.

He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.

Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.

Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

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.

He killed more men than the cholera.

So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one.

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

Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket.

Oh, darling, I've been so miserable.

Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.

He missed the prayers but he thought it would be unfair and hypocritical to say them and he did not wish to ask any favors or for any different treatment than all the men were receiving.

Spanish girls make wonderful wives. I've never had one so I know.

I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?

Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Most people never listen.

Never mistake motion for action.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

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

In order to write about life, first you must live it.

Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, ''What will you have, sir'' And I said, ''A glass of hemlock.''

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.

The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he tak

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

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

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.