Ernest Hemingway Quotes
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on the 21st of July, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. He was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman. His succinct and lucid prose style exerted a powerful influence on American and British fiction in the 20th century.
Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He is best known for works like ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections. Three of his nonfiction works were published posthumously. He died on July 2, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho, United States.
Below, you will find a collection of famous Ernest Hemingway quotes and sayings.
80 Ernest Hemingway Quotes About Life, Love and Death
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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 Quote
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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, wintery 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 died for no reason.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one’…. (The man who first said that) was probably a coward…. He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Death is like an old who*re in a bar–I’ll buy her a drink but I won’t go upstairs with her” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Remember to get the weather in your damn book–weather is very important.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Intelligence is so damn rare and the people who have it often have such a bad time with it that they get bitter or propagandistic and then it’s not much use.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I’m with you. No matter what else you have in your head I’m with you and I love you.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Listen,” I told him. “Don’t be so tough so early in the morning. I’m sure you’ve cut plenty of people’s throats. I haven’t even had my coffee yet.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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. ” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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 Quote
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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 Quote
“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.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bit*ched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don’t cheat with it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. 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 Quote
“So far, about morals, 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 Quote
“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. ” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful…” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I’m not unfaithful, darling. I’ve plenty of faults but I’m very faithful. You’ll be sick of me I’ll be so faithful.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I’d like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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 Quote
“To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don’t let it.”― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“You know I don’t love any one but you. You shouldn’t mind because some one else loved me.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times. All of war is that way.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“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.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there’s a lot of difference.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“you can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
20 Short Ernest Hemingway Quotes & Sayings
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The first draft of anything is shit.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Courage is grace under pressure.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.”― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“When you start to live outside yourself, it’s all dangerous.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“All things truly wicked start from innocence.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“In order to write about life first you must live it.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Never confuse movement with action.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“All thinking men are atheists.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“I drink to make other people more interesting.”― Ernest Hemingway Quote
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” ― Ernest Hemingway Quote