Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

14 Sourced Quotes

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Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

Ernest Hemingway
Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.

Ernest Hemingway
He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have.

Ernest Hemingway
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way.

Ernest Hemingway
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.

Ernest Hemingway
'But are there not many Fascists in your country?'
'There are many who do not know they are Fascists, but will find it out when the time comes'.

Ernest Hemingway
That tomorrow should come and that I should be there.

Ernest Hemingway
What a business. You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything. There was never any of what this is. You think that is one thing you will never have. And then, on a lousy show like this, co-ordinating two chicken-crut guerilla bands to help you blow a bridge under impossible conditions, to abort a counter-offensive that will probably already be started, you run into a girl like this Maria.

Ernest Hemingway
If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

Ernest Hemingway
If every one said orders were impossible to carry out when they were received where would you be? Where would we all be if you just said, "Impossible," when orders came?

Ernest Hemingway
For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.

Ernest Hemingway
I am no romantic glorifier of the Spanish woman, nor did I ever think of a casual piece as anything much other than a casual piece in any country. But when I am with Maria I love her so that I feel, literally, as though I would die and I never believed in that or thought that it could happen.

Ernest Hemingway
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.

Ernest Hemingway
There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

Ernest Hemingway