Ernest Hemingway Quotes (296 Quotes)

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

When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me. She looked toward the door, saw there was no one, then she sat on the side of the bed and leaned over and kissed me.

I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time...

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.

I love thee and thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be with thee that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving thee.

Viva my husband who was Mayor of this town

Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.

I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.

This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing.

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

When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.

But did thee feel the earth move?

I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.

You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together

You ought to dream. All our biggest businessmen have been dreamers.

God knows I didn't mean to fall in love with her

Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

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

If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die one it would not have cheered him any for, in the moment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has happened to the other men in similar circumstances any more than a widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved husbands have died.

And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, the thought.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is. ...Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea

I never used to realize it, I guess. I try and play it along and just not make trouble for people. Probably I never would have had any trouble at all if I hadn't run into Brett when they shipped me to England. I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyway. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.

You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development.

He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.

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

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.

It is the fault of the orders, which are too rigid. There is no allowance for a change in circumstance.

But I think the Great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

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.

You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?

Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false springàBut Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.

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.

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

Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding 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

It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.

I'm not brave any more darling. I'm all broken. They've broken me.

Your blood coagulates beautifully.

Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.

Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man.

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.