Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

~ Ernest Hemingway

It must be most dangerous then to be a man. It is indeed, madame, and but few survive it

~ Ernest Hemingway

But in the Gulf you got time. And I'm figuring all the time. I've got to think right all the time. I can't make a mistake. Not a mistake. Not once. Well, I got something to think about now all right. Something to do and something to think about besides wondering what the hell's going to happen. Besides wondering what's going to happen to the whole damn thing.

~ Ernest Hemingway

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

You’re beautiful. You walk wonderfully and if I were here and saw you now for the first time I’d be in love with you. If I saw you for the first time everything would turn over inside of me and I’d ache right through my chest.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Here's the beautiful lady with the beer.

~ Ernest Hemingway

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

~ Ernest Hemingway

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

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

~ Ernest Hemingway

It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

~ Ernest Hemingway

My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.

~ Ernest Hemingway

We are all broken, that's how the light gets in.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that aborting horror you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to say anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of picknose love. You writer.

~ Ernest Hemingway

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

~ Ernest Hemingway

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

You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. It's sort of what we have instead of God.

~ Ernest Hemingway

I still need some more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Look at the ugliness. Yet one has a feeling within one that blinds a man while he loves you. You, with that feeling, blind him, and blind yourself. Then, one day, for no reason, he sees you as ugly as you really are and he is not blind anymore and then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling...

~ Ernest Hemingway

You know I'm no squealer, Harry.''You're a rummy. But no matter how rum dumb you get, if you ever talk about that, I promise you.''I'm a good man,' he said. 'You oughtn't to talk to me like that.''They can't make it fast enough to keep you a good man,' I told him. But I didn't worry about him any more because who was going to believe him?

~ Ernest Hemingway

You're going to have things to repent, boy,' Mr. John had told Nick. 'That's one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.

~ Ernest Hemingway

He had never quarreled much with this woman, while with the women that he loved he had quarreled so much they had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarreling, killed what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

~ Ernest Hemingway

He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is.Come let us fart in the home.There is no art in a fart.Still a fart may not be artless.Let us fart and artless fart in the home.

~ Ernest Hemingway

I don't want to fool with it but what choice have I got? They don't give you any choice now. I can let it go, but what will the next thing be? I didn't ask for any of this and if you've got to do it you've got to do it.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Good. Coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave.

~ Ernest Hemingway

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

~ Ernest Hemingway

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

~ Ernest Hemingway

I love thee as I love all that we have fought for. I love thee as I love liberty and dignity and the rights of all men to work and not be hungry. I love thee as I love Madrid that we have defended and as I love all my comrades that have died. And many have died. Many. Many. Thou canst not think how many. But I love thee as I love what I love most in the world and Ilove thee more.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Then he was sorry for the great fish... How many people will he feed?.. But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course, not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity.

~ Ernest Hemingway

The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function.

~ Ernest Hemingway

I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyways. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.

~ Ernest Hemingway

If you had stars inside your brain cells, you'd probably understand what I am talking about.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and 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

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?''Of course. Who said it?''I don't know.''He was probably a coward,' she said. 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

What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.

~ Ernest Hemingway

He felt the long light body, warm against him, comforting against him, abolishing loneliness against him, magically, by a simple touching of flanks, of shoulders and of feet, making an alliance against death with him.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets.Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blankets. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Let us not doubt, brother. Let us not pry into the holy mysteries of the hen-coop with simian fingers.

~ Ernest Hemingway

I don't know who made the laws, But I know there ain't no law that you got to go hungry.

~ Ernest Hemingway

They questioned us but they were polite because we had passports and money. I do not think they believed a word of the story and I thought it was silly but it was like a law-court. You did not want something reasonable, you wanted something technical and then stuck to it without explanations.

~ Ernest Hemingway