Ernest Hemingway Quotes (296 Quotes)

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.

Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary...

We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenance

He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

Say, there's plenty of Americans on this train. They've got seven cars of them from Dayton, Ohio.

A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.

The professor at the boxing gymnasium wore mustaches and was very precise and jerky and went all to pieces if you started after him.

For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.

You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Heresy is the foe of countenance

There is a lot of time between now and the fall term. There is a lot of time between now and the day after tomorrow if you want to put it that way ...