Ernest Hemingway Quotes And Sayings

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

The Best Way To Find Out If You Can Trust Somebody Is To Trust Them.

Certainly It Is Valuable To A Trained Writer To Crash In An Aircraft Which Burns. He Learns Several Important Things Very Quickly. Whether They Will Be Of Use To Him Is Conditioned By Survival. Survival, With Honor, That Outmoded And All-important Word, Is As Difficult As Ever And As All-important To A Writer.

The First Panacea For A Mismanaged Nation Is Inflation Of The Currency; The Second Is War. Both Bring A Temporary Prosperity; Both Bring A Permanent Ruin. But Both Are The Refuge Of Political And Economic Opportunists.

Never Think That War, No Matter How Necessary, Nor How Justified, Is Not A Crime.

You See, I Am Trying In All My Stories To Get The Feeling Of The Actual Life Across - Not To Just Depict Life - Or Criticize It - But To Actually Make It Alive. So That When You Have Read Something By Me, You Actually Experience The Thing. You Can't Do This Without Putting In The Bad And The Ugly As Well As What Is Beautiful.

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.

There Is Nothing To Writing. All You Do Is Sit Down At A Typewriter And Bleed.

Never Mistake Motion For Action.

There Is No Hunting Like The Hunting Of Man, And Those Who Have Hunted Armed Men Long Enough And Liked It, Never Care For Anything Else Thereafter.

My Aim Is To Put Down On Paper What I See And What I Feel In The Best And Simplest Way.

Hesitation Increases In Relation To Risk In Equal Proportion To Age.

As You Get Older It Is Harder To Have Heroes, But It Is Sort Of Necessary.

You Can Wipe Out Your Opponents. But If You Do It Unjustly You Become Eligible For Being Wiped Out Yourself.

Prose Is Architecture, Not Interior Decoration, And The Baroque Is Over.

I Love Sleep. My Life Has The Tendency To Fall Apart When I'm Awake, You Know?

Why Should Anybody Be Interested In Some Old Man Who Was A Failure?

Always Do Sober What You Said You'd Do Drunk. That Will Teach You To Keep Your Mouth Shut.

It's None Of Their Business That You Have To Learn How To Write. Let Them Think You Were Born That Way.

Happiness In Intelligent People Is The Rarest Thing I Know.

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.

I Know War As Few Other Men Now Living Know It, And Nothing To Me Is More Revolting. I Have Long Advocated Its Complete Abolition, As Its Very Destructiveness On Both Friend And Foe Has Rendered It Useless As A Method Of Settling International Disputes.

There Is No Friend As Loyal As A Book.

Decadence Is A Difficult Word To Use Since It Has Become Little More Than A Term Of Abuse Applied By Critics To Anything They Do Not Yet Understand Or Which Seems To Differ From Their Moral Concepts.

When You Have Shot One Bird Flying You Have Shot All Birds Flying. They Are All Different And They Fly In Different Ways But The Sensation Is The Same And The Last One Is As Good As The First.

Never Go On Trips With Anyone You Do Not Love.

There's No One Thing That Is True. They're All True.

All My Life I've Looked At Words As Though I Were Seeing Them For The First Time.

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.

When People Talk, Listen Completely. Most People Never Listen.

There Is Nothing Noble In Being Superior To Your Fellow Men. True Nobility Lies In Being Superior To Your Former Self.

The World Is A Fine Place And Worth The Fighting For And I Hate Very Much To Leave It.

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.

Ezra Was Right Half The Time, And When He Was Wrong, He Was So Wrong You Were Never In Any Doubt About It.

The World Breaks Everyone, And Afterward, Some Are Strong At The Broken Places.

The Good Parts Of A Book May Be Only Something A Writer Is Lucky Enough To Overhear Or It May Be The Wreck Of His Whole Damn Life And One Is As Good As The Other.

Switzerland Is A Small, Steep Country, Much More Up And Down Than Sideways, And Is All Stuck Over With Large Brown Hotels Built On The Cuckoo Clock Style Of Architecture.

After You Finish A Book, You Know, You're Dead. But No One Knows You're Dead. All They See Is The Irresponsibility That Comes In After The Terrible Responsibility Of Writing.

Things May Not Be Immediately Discernible In What A Man Writes, And In This Sometimes He Is Fortunate; But Eventually They Are Quite Clear, And By These And The Degree Of Alchemy That He Possesses, He Will Endure Or Be Forgotten.

From Things That Have Happened And From Things As They Exist And From All Things That You Know And All Those You Cannot Know, You Make Something Through Your Invention That Is Not A Representation But A Whole New Thing Truer Than Anything True And Alive, And You Make It Alive, And If You Make It Well Enough, You Give It Immortality.

You Can Write Any Time People Will Leave You Alone And Not Interrupt You. Or, Rather, You Can If You Will Be Ruthless Enough About It. But The Best Writing Is Certainly When You Are In Love.

On The 'Star,' You Were Forced To Learn To Write A Simple Declarative Sentence. This Is Useful To Anyone. Newspaper Work Will Not Harm A Young Writer And Could Help Him If He Gets Out Of It In Time.

Cowardice... Is Almost Always Simply A Lack Of Ability To Suspend Functioning Of The Imagination.

You're Beautiful, Like A May Fly.

When I Have An Idea, I Turn Down The Flame, As If It Were A Little Alcohol Stove, As Low As It Will Go. Then It Explodes And That Is My Idea.

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.

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.

Courage Is Grace Under Pressure.

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.

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.

Wars Are Caused By Undefended Wealth.