Ernest Hemingway

Novelist

1899-07-21 – 1961-07-02

Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. He is known for works such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Books by Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises
View on Amazon
The Old Man and the Sea
View on Amazon
For Whom the Bell Tolls
View on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Quotes by Ernest Hemingway

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
Read quote
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
Read quote
I thought you'd be interested in these things as a government man. Ain't you mixed up in the prices of things we eat or something? Ain't that it? Making them more costly or something. Making the grits cost more and the grunts less?
Read quote
We were no longer, technically, children although in many ways I am quite sure that we were. Childish has become a term of contempt. Don't be childish, darling. I hope to Christ I am. Don't be childish yourself. It is possible to be grateful that no one that you would willingly associate with you say, Be mature. Be well-balanced, be well-adjusted. Africa, being as old as it is, makes all people except the professional invaders and spoilers into children. No one says to anyone in Africa, Why don't you grow up? . . . Men know that they are children in relation to the country and, as in armies, seniority and senility ride close together. But to have the heart of a child is not a disgrace. It is an honor. A man must comport himself as a man. . . . But it is never a reproach that he has kept a child's heart, a child's honesty and a child's freshness and nobility.
Read quote
Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book.
Read quote
You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.
Read quote
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.
Read quote
The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, because he enjoys music and because he likes to dance.
Read quote
I think you have more fun as a human being even though it is much more painful.
Read quote
I had an inheritance from my father,It was the moon and the sun.And though I roam all over the world,The spending of it's never done.
Read quote
In those days, there was no money to buy books.
Read quote
He did not want them themselves really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell any more lies. It wasn't worth it.
Read quote
Let me tell you something. You won't mind, will you? Don't have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can't have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can't remember what the other person's said. You'll never be able to remember conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it's awfully hard. But remember, it's for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. I'm going to England without a protest. All for literature.
Read quote
You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.
Read quote
The world breaks everyone 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.
Read quote
I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some kind for the cleansing of us all.
Read quote
We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it anymore.
Read quote
He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.
Read quote
I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.
Read quote
In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did notcompletely trust anyone.
Read quote