Hemingway Ernest Quotes & Sayings

My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine. — Ernest Hemingway,

Harry looked at him and you could see the murder come in his face ... Harry didn't say anything, but you could see the killing go out of his face and his eyes came open natural again. — Ernest Hemingway,

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad. — Ernest Hemingway,

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. — Ernest Hemingway,

I only like two other things; one is bad for my work and the other is over in half an hour or fifteen minutes. Sometimes less. Sometimes a good deal less. — Ernest Hemingway,

In those days, the Corrected Hydrographic Sailing Directions for the Mediterranean, say, or the tables in Brown's Nautical Almanac. Under the charm of these rich I was as trusting and as stupid as a bird dog who wants to go out with any man with a gun, or a trained pig — Ernest Hemingway,

You've got a lovely everything. — Ernest Hemingway,

You cannot stop trusting people in life but I have learned to be a little bit careful. The way to make people trust-worthy is to trust them. — Ernest Hemingway,

The rain will stop, the night will end, the hurt will fade. Hope is never so lost that it can't be found. — Ernest Hemingway,

Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today. He — Ernest Hemingway,

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. — Ernest Hemingway,

The clasp of the gold chain — Ernest Hemingway,

It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her. — Ernest Hemingway,

Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. — 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,

I felt very lonely when they were all there. — Ernest Hemingway,

The professor at the boxing gymnasium wore mustaches and was very precise and jerky and went all to pieces if you started after him. — Ernest Hemingway,

Before you quit, you have to try — Ernest Hemingway,

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. — Ernest Hemingway,

Write drunk; edit sober. — Peter De Vries

His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us. — Ernest Hemingway,

Man is not made for defeat. — Ernest Hemingway,

IT WAS NOW LUNCH TIME AND THEY WERE all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened. — Ernest Hemingway,

It was not brilliant bull-fighting. It was only perfect bull-fighting. — Ernest Hemingway,

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. — Ernest Hemingway,

Some websites accepted each quote we create — Ernest Hemingway,

of Esquire contained an article entitled "On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter," written by the magazine's — Ernest Hemingway,

There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you. — Ernest Hemingway,

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy. — Ernest Hemingway,

In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector. — Ernest Hemingway,

This was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other. — Ernest Hemingway,

Augustin stood there looking down at him and cursed him speaking slowly clearly bitterly and contemptuously and cursing as steadily as though he were dumping manure on a field lifting it with a dung fork out of a wagon. — Ernest Hemingway,

There is milk? What luxury! — Ernest Hemingway,

I wondered where Cohn got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken. — Ernest Hemingway,

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created. — Philip Schultz

All the passengers were crowded over on the landside of the ship, watching through the narrow windows the careened hulk of a freighter, visibly damaged by shellfire, which had driven ashore to beach her cargo. She lay aground, looking against the sand in that clear water like a whale with smokestacks that had come to the beach to die. — Ernest Hemingway,

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day? — Ernest Hemingway,

All remembrance of things past is fiction. — Ernest Hemingway,

Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself. — Ernest Hemingway,

She wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ... " "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it. — Truman Capote

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 GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

If I live long enough the luck will change. — Ernest Hemingway,

The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist. — Ernest Hemingway,

Should I pity so and so?" I asked. I gave his name but he delights so in giving it himself that I feel there is no need to give it for him.
"No. He's vicious. He's a corrupter and he's truly vicious."
"But he's supposed to be a good writer."
"He's not," she said. "He's just a showman and he corrupts for the pleasure of corruption and he leads people into other vicious practices as well. — Ernest Hemingway,

To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material. — Ernest Hemingway,

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. — Ernest Hemingway,

To win a war, we must kill our enemies. — 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,

And have you had a lovely evening?"
"Oh, priceless," I said. — Ernest Hemingway,

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
(Interview with Paris Review, 1958) — Ernest Hemingway,

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. — Ernest Hemingway,

Experiencing differences is crucial to the human condition. Especially when that difference is over the head, blower powder. — Ernest Hemingway,

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself. — Ernest Hemingway,

Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.' Then he added, 'Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish wonderful though he is. — 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,

You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. — Ernest Hemingway,

I love you for all that you are, all that you have been, all that you're yet to be. — Ernest Hemingway,

And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. — Ernest Hemingway,

Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do. — Ernest Hemingway,

I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it. — Ernest Hemingway,

Blood is thicker than water,
The young man said
As he knifed his friend
For a drooling old bitch
And a house full of lies. — Ernest Hemingway,

Life is pain, so live it up while you can. — Ernest Hemingway,

I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. — Ernest Hemingway,

The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed. — Ernest Hemingway,

All the contact I have had with politics has left me feeling as though I had been drinking out of spitoons. — Ernest Hemingway,

The writer's job is to tell the truth, — Ernest Hemingway,

Am as clear as the stars that are my brothers. Still I must sleep. They sleep and the moon and the sun sleep and even the ocean sleeps sometimes on certain days when there is no current and a flat calm. — Ernest Hemingway,

I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am? — Ernest Hemingway,

She looked fresh and young and very beautiful. I thought I had never seen any one so beautiful. 'Hello,' I said. When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me — Ernest Hemingway,

Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates. — Ernest Hemingway,

Everyone given the right opportunity will behave badly. — Ernest Hemingway,

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 is was all about. — Ernest Hemingway,

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. — Ernest Hemingway,

The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals — Ernest Hemingway,

Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly. — Ernest Hemingway,

If you can do this you are beginning to get what you are trying for, which is to make something that will become a part of the reader's experience and a part of his memory. — Ernest Hemingway,

Finishing is what you have to do. If you don't finish, nothing is worth a damn — Ernest Hemingway,

One battle doesn't make a campagin, but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole war. — Ernest Hemingway,

The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats. — Ernest Hemingway,

Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go. — Ernest Hemingway,

Memory is hunger. — Ernest Hemingway,

Oh Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick.
"No. I haven't any anesthetic," his father said. "But her screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important."
-Indian Camp- — Ernest Hemingway,

In the night he awoke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken away from him. — Ernest Hemingway,

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,

Never mistake motion for action. — Ernest Hemingway,

If I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it. — Ernest Hemingway,

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,

A person with increasing knowledge and sensory education may derive infinite enjoyment from wine. — Ernest Hemingway,

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,

There are worse places to be than on your own. — Ernest Hemingway,

I wasn't looking for another marriage. I had been married before. He is a nice man - a geologist, an Ernest Hemingway type. But Paul and I married because of convention. — Linda McCartney

First, there must be talent ... Then there must be discipline ... Then there must be ... and absolute conscience ... to prevent faking. — Ernest Hemingway,

I think you have more fun as a human being even though it is much more painful. — Ernest Hemingway,

Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. — Ernest Hemingway,

But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), ... — Ernest Hemingway,

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you. — Ernest Hemingway,

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. — Ernest Hemingway,

To stay in places and to leave, to trust, to distrust, to no longer believe and believe again, ... to watch the snow come, to watch it go, to hear rain on a tent, to know where I can find what I want. — Ernest Hemingway,

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you ... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you. — Ernest Hemingway,

it in those days. — Ernest Hemingway,