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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 quotes92 likes

Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“Hunger is good discipline.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.”

Ernest Hemingway

“Oh, darling, I've been so miserable.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

“No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”

Ernest Hemingway

“He'll never be frightened. He knows too damn much.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

“My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren't with me I haven't a thing in the world.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”

Ernest Hemingway

“I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

“Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.”

Ernest Hemingway

“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.”

Ernest Hemingway

“Fish," he said, "I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.”

Ernest Hemingway

Source: The Complete Short Stories

“i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

Ernest Hemingway

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

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

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

“Out of all the things you could not have there were some things that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.”

Ernest Hemingway

“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ch 43
Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

“In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.”

Ernest Hemingway

Men Without Women (short story collection) (1927)
Source: The Complete Short Stories

“There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. 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 it was all about.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Variant: 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.
Source: The Sun Also Rises

“You must be prepared to work always without applause.”

Ernest Hemingway

“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 book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.”

Ernest Hemingway

Variant: I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.
Source: The Complete Short Stories

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Ch. 30

“The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Variant: All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.
Source: The Sun Also Rises (1926)

“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Count Mippipopolous, in Book 1, Ch. 7
Source: The Sun Also Rises (1926)

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and can coast down them. … Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”

Ernest Hemingway

[By-Line, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades by Ernest Hemingway, White, William, 1967, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 364]
Source: By-Line: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades

“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 book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“I don’t. I don’t want anybody else to touch you. I’m silly. I get furious if they touch you.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter (6 December 1924); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it. It will crush you. And you’re still going to love all of it. Doesn’t it sound lovely beyond belief?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

Variant: You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it. It will crush you. And you’re still going to love all of it.
Source: The Garden of Eden

“My big fish must be somewhere.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

Ernest Hemingway

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16

“Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Ernest Hemingway

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition