Quotes by Ernest Hemingway

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

When people talk, listen completely.

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything.

Humility is not disgraceful, and carries no loss of true pride.

Write drunk; edit sober.

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

I didn't want to kiss you goodbye -- that was the trouble -- I wanted to kiss you good night -- and there's a lot of difference.

I drink to make other people more interesting.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

All bad writers are in love with the epic.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

Courage is grace under pressure.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Man is not made for defeat.

We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.

There's nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility is being superior to your former self.

A cat has absolute emotional honesty, human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; But it is the journey that matters, in the end.

The cat has complete emotional honesty -- an attribute not often found in humans.

To be a successful father, there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

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

You are so brave and quiet, I forget you are suffering.

Everything you have is to give.

All good books have one thing in common, they are truer than if they had really happened.

To be a successful father there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

Work could cure almost anything.

The first draft of anything is garbage.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people.

Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.

Before you quit, you have to try.

We are all broken. That's how the light gets in.

What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure.

If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.

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

The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

We have to get used to the idea that at the most important crossroads in our life there are no signs.

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

The fools think I am writing algebra but what I am really writing is geometry.

Modern life ... is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

They arrested us after breakfast.

Intelligence is so damn rare and the people who have it often have such a bad time with it that they get bitter or propagandistic and then it's not much use.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

Writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for wordlessness.

The cynical ones are the best companions. But the best of all are the cynical ones when they are still devout; or after; when having been devout, then cynical, they become devout again by cynicism.

All the contact I have had with politics has left me feeling as though I had been drinking out of spitoons.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?'
'Of course. Who said it?'
'I don't know.'
'He was probably a coward,' she said. He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.

The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.

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

I knew that now, reading it in the oversensitized state of my mind after too much brandy, I would remember it somewhere, and afterward it would seem as though it had really happened to me.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is.
Come let us fart in the home.
There is no art in a fart.
Still a fart may not be artless.
Let us fart and artless fart in the home.

Best of all he loved the fall
the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
leaves floating on the trout streams
and above the hills the high blue windless skies…now he will be a part of them forever.

Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

Gradually, then suddenly.

Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.

I had an inheritance from my father, It was the moon and the sun. And though I roam all over the world, The spending of it's never done.

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

I wonder. Of course maybe that isn't what they figure to do. Maybe they aren't going to do any such thing. But it's natural that's what they would do and I heard that word.

The sinews of war are five -- men, money, materials, maintenance and morale.

Before we take to the sea, we walk on land... Before we create, we must understand.

We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood.

If you're looking for messages, try Western Union.

Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill.

Religion is the opium of the poor.

Listen, I told him. Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

He had never quarreled much with this woman, while with the women that he loved he had quarreled so much they had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarreling, killed what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.

The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed.

It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I'm not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't. She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.

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

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.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

Once in Africa I lost the corkscrew and we were forced to live off food and water for weeks.

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

Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

You did not do so badly for something worthless,' he said to his left hand. 'But there was a moment when I could not find you.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Cheer up,' I said. 'All countries look just like the moving pictures.

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.

How do you tell a valuable French book?' 'First there are the pictures. Then it is a question of the quality of the pictures. Then it is the binding. If a book is good, the owner will have it bound properly. All books in English are bound, but bound badly. There is no way of judging them.

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

In America, they make such things of wire and of sponge-rubber, such as you use in the sets of tanks. You never know there, whether there is any truth in the matter, unless you are a bad boy as I am.

I would take anything I love and throw it off the highest cliff you ever saw and not wait to hear it bounce.

Ay, he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it. Financial security then is a great help as it keeps you from worrying.

His (the writer's) standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be.

I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing, the old man said. They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.

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

Shooting gives me a good feeling. It is faster than baseball and you are out on one strike.

You can either buy clothes or buy pictures, she said. It's that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Pay no attention to your clothes and no attention at all to the mode, and buy your clothes for comfort and durability, and you will have the clothes money to buy pictures.

Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.

Rush, that most exciting perversion of life, the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should be truly allowed for its doing.

You're beautiful. You walk wonderfully and if I were here and saw you now for the first time I'd be in love with you. If I saw you for the first time everything would turn over inside of me and I'd ache right through my chest.

You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across, not just to depict life, or criticize it, but to actually make it alive.

The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.

To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it.

I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.

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.

I am not sure Scott had ever drunk wine from a bottle before and it was exciting to him as though he were slumming or as a girl might be excited by going swimming for the first time without a bathing suit.

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, anyways. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.

Develop a built-in bullshit detector.

No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.

You must hold hard to life and do it. But life is a cheap thing beside a man's work. The only thing is that you need it. Hold it tight.

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

Every damn thing is your own fault, if you are any good.

Summer is a discouraging time to work -- you don't feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.

The educated man is the man who can do something. The quality of his work marks the degree of his education.

The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

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

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.

I don't. I don't want anybody else to touch you. I'm silly. I get furious if they touch you.

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

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.

They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.

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

You're my religion. You're all I've got.

My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren't with me I haven't a thing in the world.

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

God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences.

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother.

Fish, he said, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.

Do you have other things like that to look forward to?
Just everyday. I look forward to everyday.

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

A writer is like a gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like any government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.

Being against evil doesn't make you good.

How lazily the sun goes down in Granada, it hides beneath the water, it conceals in the Alhambra!

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.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

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.

If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. Come let us fart in the home. There is no art in a fart. Still a fart may not be artless. Let us fart and artless fart in the home.

I loved her and I loved no one else and we had a lovely magic time while we were alone. I worked well and we made great trips, and I thought we were invulnerable again, and it wasn't until we were out of the mountains in late spring, and back in Paris, that the other thing started again.

You are all a lost generation. with credit to Gertrude Stein.

I was always a lonely person when I was with everyone.

Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

I had no feeling for him. He did not seem to have anything to do with me. I felt no feeling of fatherhood.

After the New Yorker piece I decided that I would never give another interview to anyone on any subject and that I would keep away from all places where I would be likely to be interviewed. If you say nothing it is difficult for someone to get it wrong.

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

No horse named Morbid ever won a race.

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

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

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

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.

I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing, or very little, the shock can kill a man.

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.

The time to work is shorter all the time and if you waste it you ... have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness.

Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.

In a power hungry, power worshipping society, men label themselves atheist.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.

Ronda is the place where to go, if you are planning to travel to Spain for a honeymoon or for being with a girlfriend. The whole city and its surroundings are a romantic set. ... Nice promenades, good wine, excellent food, nothing to do.