Ernest Hemingway: Goodness

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

“For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.”

Ernest Hemingway

“Take a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.”

Ernest Hemingway

A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Context: 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.
Context: 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.

“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.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (4 September 1929); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

“If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.”

Ernest Hemingway

“He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.”

Ernest Hemingway

Paris Review interview (1958)

“Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to Esquire editor Arnold Gingrich (11 April 1935); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (13 September 1929); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“A bottle of wine was good company.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

“Every day above earth is a good day.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

“It was strange going back to Spain again: I had never expected to be allowed to return to the country that I loved more than any other except my own and I would not return so long as any of my friends there were in jail. But in the spring of 1953 in Cuba I talked with good friends who had fought on opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War about stopping in Spain on our way to Africa and they agreed that I might honorably return to Spain if I did not recant anything that I had written and kept my mouth shut on politics. There was no question of applying for a visa. They were no longer required for American tourists.”

Ernest Hemingway

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 1 (the opening paragraph of the book)

“Fortunately I have never learned to take the good advice I give myself nor the counsel of my fears.”

Ernest Hemingway

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 1

“You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice.”

Ernest Hemingway

Speaking to his son Gregory, as quoted in Papa, a Personal Memoir (1976) Gregory H. Hemingway

“Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself.”

Ernest Hemingway book Islands in the Stream

Pt. 1: Bimini, Section 4
Islands in the Stream (1970)

“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.'
'All right. I'll grow one. I'll start now this minute. It's a good idea. It will give me something to do.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Catherine and Henry discussing whether he should grow a beard, in Ch. 38
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

“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.”

Ernest Hemingway book Fathers and Sons

Nick Adams of "Fathers and Sons" in Winner Take Nothing (1932)