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Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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501 Quotes for Timeless Wisdom on Love, Happiness, and Writing

Uncover Hemingway's timeless wisdom. His iconic quotes explore love, happiness, writing, and self-discovery. Experience the profound complexity and beauty of life through his inspiring words.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an influential American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist known for his economical and understated writing style. His work, which embodied his iceberg theory, had a significant impact on 20th-century fiction. Hemingway lived a daring lifestyle and cultivated a public image that earned him admiration from subsequent generations. He received the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 for his contributions to the literary world. Over his career, Hemingway published an impressive body of work that includes seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction books. Several more of his works were released posthumously, solidifying his place as one of America's literary greats.

Raised in Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway briefly worked as a reporter for The Kansas City Star after finishing high school. However, he soon decided to enlist as an ambulance driver during World War I and served on the Italian Front. Unfortunately, he sustained severe wounds in 1918 and returned home. These wartime experiences heavily influenced his acclaimed novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1921, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson before moving to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. During this time, he came into contact with the modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community in Paris—an experience that profoundly shaped his writing style. He published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926 and subsequently divorced Richardson before marrying Pauline Pfeiffer. His coverage of the Spanish Civil War fueled his book For Whom the Bell Tolls while also resulting in another divorce with Pfeiffer. Later on, Martha Gellhorn became Hemingway's third wife until they separated when he met Mary Welsh during World War II in London. As a journalist covering significant historical events like the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris alongside Allied troops, Hemingway played an active role in war reportage. He had permanent residences in Key West, Florida throughout the 1930s and in Cuba during the 1940s and 1950s. Hemingway's life took a tragic turn during a trip to Africa in 1954 when he was involved in two plane accidents within consecutive days that left him with lifelong pain and health issues. Ultimately, he died by suicide at his house in Ketchum, Idaho, in mid-1961.

✵ 21. July 1899 – 2. July 1961   •   Other names Ernest Miller Hemingway, Ernst Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway photo
Ernest Hemingway: 501   quotes 88   likes

Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“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

“You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is — but if you say so yourself you feel like a shit.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to Malcolm Cowley (17 October 1945); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Feeling

“Write me at the Hotel Quintana, Pamplona, Spain. Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1 July 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Way , Feeling

“Fuck literature.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter (1924) to Ezra Pound; published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker, p. 113

Literature

“I didn't marry her family.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

'Of course not. But you always do. Dead or alive.'
David and Colonel John Boyle in Ch. 7
The Garden of Eden (1986)

Family

“Darling, would you like to grow a beard?'
'Would you like me to?'
'It might be fun. I'd like to see you with a beard.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

'All right. I'll grow one. I'll start now this minute. It's a good idea. It will give me something to do.'
Catherine and Henry discussing whether he should grow a beard, in Ch. 38
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

“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

Letter to F Scott Fitzgerald, as quoted in Scott Fitzgerald (1962) by Andrew Turnbull (1962) Ch. 14

Hurt , Hell , Cheating , Personality

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to Bernard Berenson (13 September 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

People , Boy , Secret , Fish

“Do you remember how old Ford was always writing how Conrad suffered so when he wrote? How it was un metier de chien etc. Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to Malcolm Cowley (14 November 1945); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Suffering , Feeling

“Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.'
'You think so?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

'I'm quite sure. If you don't it doesn't matter. Nothing will matter then.'
Colonel John Boyle and David in Ch. 7
The Garden of Eden (1986)

Thinking

“But I get so hungry,' she said. 'Is it normal do you think? Do you always get so hungry when you make love?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

'When you love somebody.'
Catherine and David Bourne in Ch. 1
The Garden of Eden (1986)

Love , Thinking , Making love

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.”

Ernest Hemingway

Paris Review interview (1958)

“What happens to people that love each other?”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

'I suppose they have whatever they have and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness for ever.'
Colonel Richard Cantwell and Renata in Ch. 38
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

Love , Making love , People

“Tell me some true things about fighting.'
'Tell me you love me.”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

'I love you,' the girl said. 'You can publish it in the Gazzettino if you like. I love your hard, flat body and your strange eyes that frighten me when they become wicked. I love your hand and all your other wounded places.'
Renata and Colonel Richard Cantwell in Ch. 12
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

Fight , Love , Making love

“But are there not many Fascists in your country?”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

'There are many who do not know they are Fascists, but will find it out when the time comes'.
Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Ch. 16

Country

“Oh, Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'
Book 3, Ch. 19 (the last lines of the novel)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Time

“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.'
'Yes.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

'It's sort of what we have instead of God.'
Lady Brett Ashley to Jake Barnes, in Book 3, Ch. 19
The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Bitch , Making love , Feeling

“How did you go bankrupt?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Bill asked.
'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'
Book 2, Ch. 13
Mike's response is often misquoted as "It occurs first very slowly, then all at once."
The Sun Also Rises (1926)

“All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Way , Dogs , Hell

“The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.”

Ernest Hemingway

"The Age Demanded" in Der Querschnitt (February 1925); as quoted in Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (1983) by Noel Riley Fitch

Age , Dance

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Ernest Hemingway

The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin, in Chapter 15 "To the Ice"
See also https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hemingways-stolen-quotati_b_6868994.
Misattributed
Variant: It is good to have an end to a journey, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.