Ernest Hemingway: Trending quotes (page 24)

“But that story has in it the only constructive thing I ever learned about women - that no matter what happened to them and how they turned, you should try to disregard all that and remember them only as they were on the best day they ever had.”

Ernest Hemingway

On his short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Pt. 2, Ch. 9
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Women , Learning

“[W]hen he came out of the anaesthetic the first thing he said was, 'What a man Ernesto would be if he could only write.”

Ernest Hemingway

Luis Miguel Dominguin had undergone surgery after being wounded in a bullfight. From the context it is clear that his remark about Hemingway was a joke.
Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 10

“The way to learn whether a person is trustworthy is to trust him.”

Ernest Hemingway

Pt. 2, Ch. 6
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Way , Learning , Personality

“[T]he rain was making the finest sound that we, who live much outside of houses, ever hear.”

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

Part III, Ch. 1
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Housing

“If you have a success, you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.”

Ernest Hemingway

As quoted in That Summer in Paris (1963) by Morley Callaghan

Success

“Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?… The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.”

Ernest Hemingway

Postscript to letter to critic, poet and translator Ivan Kashkin (19 August 1935); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Life , Pleasure , Idea , Drink

“I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot, i. e., loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better), you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter (12 January 1936); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Life , Hurt , Dead

“I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter (26 August 1940); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

God , Thinking

“Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth: Hemingstein's Law on the Dynamics of Dying.”

Ernest Hemingway

Pt. 2, Ch. 7
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Death , Fear , Law , Wealth

“To be a successful father … there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.”

Ernest Hemingway

Pt. 2, Ch. 5
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Success

“Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.”

Ernest Hemingway

On Ezra Pound, as quoted in The New Republic (11 November 1936)

Time

“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Bill Gorton to Jake Barnes, in Book 2, Ch. 12
The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Death , Sex , Drink , Time

“For sale: baby shoes, never used.”

Ernest Hemingway

Shoe , Baby

“In life, one must (first) last.”

Ernest Hemingway

Life

“Write drunk, edit sober.”

Ernest Hemingway

“The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon.”

Ernest Hemingway

The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.
Pt. 1, Ch. 4
Papa Hemingway (1966)

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

[…] it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.
Part I, Ch. 1
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Literature , Books

“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

A Letter from Cuba (1934)

Reading , Bad luck , People , Books

“Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 9

Whore , Water , Wine

“Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter (9 July 1950); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Travel