Ernest Hemingway Quotes

475 Sourced Quotes

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

Ernest Hemingway
The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

Ernest Hemingway
Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.

Ernest Hemingway
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot, i. e., loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better), you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.

Ernest Hemingway
I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.

Ernest Hemingway
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. […] it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.

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

Ernest Hemingway
Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Ernest Hemingway
Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

Ernest Hemingway
And you'll always love me won't you? Yes And the rain won't make any difference? No

Ernest Hemingway
'It's his sense of self-preservation.' 'The great Italian sense.' 'The greatest Italian sense.'

Ernest Hemingway
I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing truly what you really
felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, had been taught to feel, was to put down what really
happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced… the
real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year
or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.

Ernest Hemingway
If a writer … knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows…. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Ernest Hemingway
Now Tom was - the hell with that, he said to himself. It is something that happens to everybody. I should know about that by now. It is the only thing that is really final, though.
How do you know that? he asked himself. Going away can be final. Walking out the door can be final. Any form of real betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final.

Ernest Hemingway
It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.

Ernest Hemingway
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.

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

Ernest Hemingway
All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

Ernest Hemingway
Now I am depressed myself,' I said. 'That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.

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

Ernest Hemingway
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know, you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.

Ernest Hemingway
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.

Ernest Hemingway
'What happens to people that love each other?'
'I suppose they have whatever they have and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness for ever.'

Ernest Hemingway
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Ernest Hemingway
The only thing that could spoil a day was people.... People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

Ernest Hemingway
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Ernest Hemingway
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Ernest Hemingway
Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.

Ernest Hemingway
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.

Ernest Hemingway
That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.

Ernest Hemingway