Ernest Hemingway Quotes (296 Quotes)

All thinking men are atheists.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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