Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Best Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Ernest Hemingway Quotes About Writing

1. “Do not worry. You have always written before…” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
2. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. – Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women
3. As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand. – Ernest Hemingway
4. There is no friend as loyal as a book. – Ernest Hemingway.
   

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5. There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. – Ernest Hemingway
6. My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing. – Ernest Hemingway
7. I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. – Ernest Hemingway
8. That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way. – Ernest Hemingway
9. For a long time now, I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. – Ernest Hemingway
10. 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
11. If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-ninth of it being above water. – Ernest Hemingway
12. Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up. – Ernest Hemingway
13. My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. – Ernest Hemingway
14. When writing a novel, a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. – Ernest Hemingway
15. Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. – Ernest Hemingway
16. It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way. – Ernest Hemingway
17. 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
18. 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
19. To F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.” – Ernest Hemingway
20. “We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem,” [Evan Shipman] once said to me. “The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance. – Ernest Hemingway
21. [F. Scott Fitzgerald] had the shyness about it that all non-conceited writers have when they have done something very fine. – Ernest Hemingway.
22. To an aspiring writer: “You shouldn’t write if you can’t write.” – Ernest Hemingway.
23. The first draft of anything is shit. – Ernest Hemingway.
24. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. – Ernest Hemingway.
25. 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, Men Without Women.
26. “You ought to write, he told himself. Maybe you will again some time.” ― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
27. “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” ― Ernest Hemingway
28. “He wrote it exactly and the sinister part only showed as the light feathering of a smooth swell on a calm day marking the reef beneath.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden.
29. Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light. ― Ernest Hemingway.
    

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30. “A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.” ― Ernest Hemingway.
31. All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. ― Ernest Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway Love Quotes

32. “All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing.” ― Ernest Hemingway
33. “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
34. I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.” ― Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters.
35. “Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
36. “I’m going to stay with you. If you go to jail, we might as well both go.” ― Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time.
37. 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.
38. The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. ― Ernest Hemingway About Love.
39. Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. ― Ernest Hemingway.
    

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40. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. ― Ernest Hemingway.
41. I was so sentimental about you I’d break anyone’s heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It’s broken and gone. Everything I believe in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn’t it? ― Ernest Hemingway.
42. When you love you wish to do things for? You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. ― Ernest Hemingway.
43. Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light. Ernest Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway Quotes About Life

44. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. ― Ernest Hemingway
45. Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. ― Ernest Hemingway
46. When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. ― Ernest Hemingway
47. In order to write about life first, you must live it. ― Ernest Hemingway.
    

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48. The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. ― Ernest Hemingway
49. But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. ― Ernest Hemingway
50. 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
51. A good life is not measured by any biblical span. ― Ernest Hemingway
52. We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ― Ernest Hemingway
53. Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. ― Ernest Hemingway
54. I drink to make other people more interesting. ― Ernest Hemingway
55. Courage is grace under pressure. ― Ernest Hemingway
56. 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
57. We’re stronger in the places that we’ve been broken. ― Ernest Hemingway
58. 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
59. I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know? ― Ernest Hemingway

60. Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime, you will lose a couple of years. If something g is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. ― Ernest Hemingway
61. “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
62. But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose. ― Ernest Hemingway
63. “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.” ― Ernest Hemingway
64. Never confuse movement with action. ― Ernest Hemingway
65. There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. ― Ernest Hemingway
66. 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
67. There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. ― Ernest Hemingway
68. No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
69. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. ― Ernest Hemingway
70. “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.” ― Ernest Hemingway
71. Life is pain, so live it up while you can. ― Ernest Hemingway
72. Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched 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
73. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing. ― Ernest Hemingway
74. There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live with and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don’t ever tell which is which. ― Ernest Hemingway
75. Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them. ― Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway Quotes About Death

76. Fear of death increases in exact proportion to the increase in wealth. ― Ernest Hemingway
77. 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
78. Dying is a very simple thing. I’ve looked at death and really, I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. ― Ernest Hemingway
79. A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all-powerful, and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. ― Ernest Hemingway
80. 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
81. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. ― Ernest Hemingway
82. Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor. ― Ernest Hemingway
83. 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
84. There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. ― Ernest Hemingway
85. All stories, if continued far enough, end in death. ― Ernest Hemingway
86. There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. ― Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway Quotes About War

87. Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. – Ernest Hemingway
88. All thinking men are atheists. – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
89. Wars are caused by undefended wealth. ― Ernest Hemingway
90. The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it and the idiotic way they run it when they get it so that an honest man will distrust it as he would distrust a racket and refuse to be enslaved into it. ― Ernest Hemingway
91. Perhaps wars weren’t won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War. ― Ernest Hemingway
92. It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine, I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people. ― Ernest Hemingway
93. To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material. ― Ernest Hemingway
94. It could be worse,’ Passini said respectfully. “There is nothing worse than war.” Defeat is worse.” I do not believe it,” Passini said still respectfully. “What is defeat? You go home. ― Ernest Hemingway
95. (World War I) was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought. ― Ernest Hemingway
96. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene. ― Ernest Hemingway
97. We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the pre-meditation of a long-planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.
98. No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.
99. In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.
100. War is not won by victory.
101. You never kill anyone that you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.
102. 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.
103. Aggressive war is a great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.
104. 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 Quotes About Cats

105. A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. ― Ernest Hemingway
106. One cat just leads to another. ― Ernest Hemingway
107. A cat has absolute honesty. ― Ernest Hemingway
108. No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist. ― Ernest Hemingway
109. 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 (1995). “The old man and the sea”, p.9, Hueber Verlag

Ernest Hemingway Journey Quote

110. “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” ― Ernest Hemingway

Top 10 Ernest Hemingway famous quotes

1. “The way to make people trustworthy is to trust them.” – Ernest Hemingway.
2. “When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking about what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway.
3. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway.
4. “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” – Ernest Hemingway.
5. “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.” – Ernest Hemingway.
6. “Courage is grace under pressure.” – Ernest Hemingway.
7. “But man is not made for defeat… A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man, and The Sea, 1952.
8. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929.
9. “As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” – Ernest Hemingway.
10. “In order to write about life first you must live it.” – Ernest Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway Quotes About Friendship

1. He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment. – Ernest Hemingway.
2. I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends. – Ernest Hemingway.
3. And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, the thought. – Ernest Hemingway.
4. There is no friend as loyal as a book. – Ernest Hemingway.