Ernest Hemingway: Goodness

Ernest Hemingway was American author and journalist. Explore interesting quotes on goodness.
Ernest Hemingway: 1002 quotes92 likes

“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

“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter (15 May 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“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 book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms (1929), Ch. 34

“Maybe… you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 1

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

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Book 3, Ch. 19 (the last lines of the novel)
Source: The Sun Also Rises (1926)

“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

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones 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

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country. ~ Horace in Odes, Book 3, Ode 2, Line 13, as translated in The Works of Horace by J. C. Elgood
Notes on the Next War (1935)

“And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.”

Ernest Hemingway

As quoted in "Portrait of Mr. Papa" by Malcolm Cowley in LIFE magazine (10 January 1949)
Context: It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.

“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

“It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“Hunger is good discipline.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

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

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

“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)

“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