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)
Grace under pressure.
The sun was not yet quite up, but it was bright enough to see the mountains.
No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of the ages. The days have never known that wisdom, I swear it.
There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
All thinking men are atheists.
The writer's job is to tell the truth.
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously.
I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
The sea is the great constant in life.
Write hard, type faster, and the book will get done.
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that matter.
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.
The rich were dull and they drank too much.
If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle that will make the greatest impression on the mind for the longest time.
You are all a lost generation.
The only thing that can be beaten is a bad reputation.
I have learned to hate all those who pretend to be good.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector.
In going where you have to go, and seeing what you have to see, you will learn more than in years of studying maps.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
Contemporaries of Ernest Hemingway
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).