Ernest Hemingway Quotes

If I walked down by different streets to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I could walk through the gardens and then go to the Musée du Luxembourg where the great paintings were that have now mostly been transferred to the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. I went there nearly every day for the Cézannes and to see the Manets and the Monets and the other Impressionists that I had first come to know about in the Art Institute at Chicago. I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret. But if the light was gone in the Luxembourg I would walk up through the gardens and stop in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus.
Ernest Hemingway
The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
Ernest Hemingway
My wife and I had called on Miss Stein, and she and the friend who lived with her had been very cordial and friendly and we had loved the big studio with the great paintings. I t was like one of the best rooms in the finest museum except there was a big fireplace and it was warm and comfortable and they gave you good things to eat and tea and natural distilled liqueurs made from purple plums, yellow plums or wild raspberries.Miss Stein was very big but not tall and was heavily built like a peasant woman. She had beautiful eyes and a strong German-Jewish face that also could have been Friulano and she reminded me of a northern I talian peasant woman with her clothes, her mobile face and her lovely, thick, alive immigrant hair which she wore put up in the same way she had probably worn it in college. She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.Her companion had a very pleasant voice, was small, very dark, with her hair cut like Joan of Arc in the Boutet de Monvel illustrations and had a very hooked nose. She was working on a piece of needlepoint when we first met them and she worked on this and saw to the food and drink and talked to my wife. She made one conversation and listened to two and often interrupted the one she was not making. Afterwards she explained to me that she always talked to the wives. The wives, my wife and I felt, were tolerated. But we liked Miss Stein and her friend, although the friend was frightening. The paintings and the cakes and the eau-de-vie were truly wonderful. They seemed to like us too and treated us as though we were very good, well-mannered and promising children and I felt that they forgave us for being in love and being married - time would fix that - and when my wife invited them to tea, they accepted.
Ernest Hemingway
The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful) the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.
Ernest Hemingway
Hem, you know I don't think that owner's wife where you live likes me. She wouldn't let me wait upstairs for you.''I'll tell her,' I said.'Don't bother. I can always wait here. It's very pleasant in the sun now, isn't it?''It's fall now,' I said. 'I don't think you dress warmly enough.''It's only cool in the evening,' Evan said. 'I'll wear my coat.''Do you know where it is?''No. But it's somewhere safe.''How do you know?''Because I left the poem in it.
Ernest Hemingway
Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go. Traveling third class on the train was not expensive. The pension cost very little more than we spent in Paris.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
Ernest Hemingway
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Ernest Hemingway
His (the writer's) standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention out of his experience should produce a truer account than anything factual can be.
Ernest Hemingway
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
Ernest Hemingway
The writer must write what he has to say not speak it.
Ernest Hemingway
Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemingway
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 movable feast.
Ernest Hemingway
I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Ernest Hemingway
Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing or very little the shock can kill a man.
Ernest Hemingway
As you get older it is harder to have heroes but it is sort of necessary.
Ernest Hemingway
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
Ernest Hemingway
The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last in it and not be smashed by it.
Ernest Hemingway
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
Ernest Hemingway
The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last in it and not be smashed by it.
Ernest Hemingway
Cowardice as distinguished from panic is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
Ernest Hemingway
The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.
Ernest Hemingway
As long as you can start you are all right. The juice will come.
Ernest Hemingway
You lose it if you talk about it.
Ernest Hemingway
Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.
Ernest Hemingway
Cowardice ... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
Ernest Hemingway
The grain-fields went up the hillsides. Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain.
Ernest Hemingway
With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.
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 forever.
Ernest Hemingway
For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.
Ernest Hemingway
But 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
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.
Ernest Hemingway
There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
Ernest Hemingway
Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.
Ernest Hemingway
As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
Ernest Hemingway
Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.
Ernest Hemingway
…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.
Ernest Hemingway
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Ernest Hemingway
I drink to make other people more interesting.
Ernest Hemingway
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
Ernest Hemingway
When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away. They do not always learn about the good, the attractive, the charming, the soon-beloved, the generous, the understanding rich who have no bad qualities and who give each day the quality of a festival and who, when they have passed and taken the nourishment they needed, leave everything deader than the roots of any grass Attila's horses' hooves have ever scoured.
Ernest Hemingway
The purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war was floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind in the water.
Ernest Hemingway
It was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch with our bags and the rod-case to go to Burguete. People were on top of the bus, and others were climbing up a ladder. Bill went up and Robert sat beside Bill to save a place for me, and I went back in the hotel to get a couple of bottles of wine to take with us. When I came out the bus was crowded. Men and women were sitting on all the baggage and boxes on top, and the women all had their fans going in the sun. It certainly was hot. Robert climbed down and fitted into the place he had saved on the one wooden seat that ran across the top. Robert Cohn stood in the shade of the arcade waiting for us to start. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine-skin to Bill and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motor-horn so well and so suddenly that spilled some of the wine, and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink. He made the klaxon again a little later, and it fooled me the second time. He was very good at it. The Basques liked it. The man next to Bill was talking to him in Spanish and Bill was not getting it, so he offered the man one of the bottles of wine. The man waved it away. He said it was too hot and he had drunk too much at lunch. When Bill offered the bottle the second time he took a long drink, and then the bottle went all over that part of the bus. Every one took a drink very politely, and then they made us cork it up and put it away. They all wanted us to drink from their leather wine-bottles. They were peasants going up into the hills.
Ernest Hemingway
There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a hangover in the morning. Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill. Night life goes round and round and you look at the wall to make it stop. Night life comes out of a bottle and goes into a jar. If you think how much are the drinks it is not night life.
Ernest Hemingway
Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.
Ernest Hemingway
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.
Ernest Hemingway
There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
Ernest Hemingway
I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation.
Ernest Hemingway
But in the dark now and no glow showing and no lights and only the wind and the steady pull of the sail he felt that perhaps he was already dead. He put his two hands together and felt the palms. They were not dead and he could bring the pain of life by simply opening and closing them. He leaned his back against the stern and knew he was not dead. His shoulders told him.
Ernest Hemingway
For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit’s foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.
Ernest Hemingway
But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
Ernest Hemingway
He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.
Ernest Hemingway
He had only one thing to do and that was what he should think about and he must think it out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry. To worry was a bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult.
Ernest Hemingway
He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.
Ernest Hemingway
The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean.
Ernest Hemingway
I obscenity in the milk of my shame.
Ernest Hemingway
It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I'm not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't.' She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.
Ernest Hemingway
Besides, I'm not jealous. I'm just so in love with you that there isn't anything else.
Ernest Hemingway
No. Have it here where it is quiet." "You and your quiet", said Brett. "What is it men feel about quiet?" "We like it," said the count. Like you like your noise, my dear.
Ernest Hemingway