Ernest Hemingway Quotes (296 Quotes)

All thinking men are atheists.

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

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement.

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.

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.

There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.

It's silly not to hope. It's a sin he thought.

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

The grain-fields went up the hillsides. Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain.

Because we would not wear any clothes because it was so hot and the windows open and the swallows flying over the roofs of the houses and when it was dark afterward and you went to the window very small bats hunting over the houses and close down over the trees and we would drink capri and the door locked and it hot and only a sheet and the whole night and we would both love each other all night in the hot night in Milan. That was how it ought to be.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.

I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.

Going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that.

The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.

Blow, blow, ye western wind . . . Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again. That my love Catherine. That my sweet love Catherine down might rain. Blow her again to me.

They arrested us after breakfast.

I did not understand them but they did not have any mystery, and when I understood them they meant nothing to me. I was sorry about this but there was nothing I could do about it.

And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.

I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other.

This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it

Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.

He'll never be frightened. He knows too damn much.

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

But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

This was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other.

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

Augustin stood there looking down at him and cursed him speaking slowly clearly bitterly and contemptuously and cursing as steadily as though he were dumping manure on a field lifting it with a dung fork out of a wagon.

I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.

Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us.

Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?

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 is was all about.

This is a hell of dull talk...How about some of that champagne?

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.