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)
There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than the alcoholic who dies by accident.
The way to learn whether you can trust a man is to trust him.
The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
I drink to make other people more interesting.
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be a bitch because you're so bloody attractive.
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.
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
There are some things that a man has to do for himself.
The sea is an old man, and he is a good man.
No, I don't believe in the after life, but I'm taking an extra pair of socks.
The only time that I have ever been able to write is when I have been in love.
We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.
You'll lose it, if you talk about it.
I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill overnight.
It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
The greatest gift is a passion for reading.
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
The good writers are the ones who tell the truth.
What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Contemporaries of Ernest Hemingway
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).