Ernest Hemingway
Master of understated prose, Nobel laureate
Most quoted
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
— from A Farewell to Arms, 1929
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you have finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
— from Death in the Afternoon, 1964
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
— from Death in the Afternoon (posthumously published preface), 1964
All quotes by Ernest Hemingway (235)
In order to write about life first you must live it.
The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
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.
The shortest answer is doing the thing.
Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world.
The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after.
The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.
Paris is a moveable feast.
All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.
Contemporaries of Ernest Hemingway
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).