Ernest Hemingway: Goodness (page 3)

Ernest Hemingway was American author and journalist. Explore interesting quotes on goodness.
Ernest Hemingway: 1002   quotes 88   likes

“But don't try to find an untroublesome woman. She will dull out on you. What makes a woman good in bed makes it impossible for her to live alone.”

Ernest Hemingway

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

“If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.”

Ernest Hemingway

A Letter from Cuba (1934)

Books , Boy , Reading , Night

“You're going to write straight and simple and good now. That's the start.'
'What if I'm not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?'
'Write how you are but make it straight.”

Ernest Hemingway book Islands in the Stream

Pt. 1: Bimini, Section 10
Islands in the Stream (1970)

Way , Thinking

“Well, Fitz, I looked all through that bible, it was in very fine print and stumbling on that great book Ecclesiastics, read it aloud to all who would listen. Soon I was alone and began cursing the bloody bible because there were no titles in it — although I found the source of practically every good title you ever heard of. But the boys, principally Kipling, had been there before me and swiped all the good ones so I called the book Men Without Women hoping it would have a large sale among the fairies and old Vassar Girls.”

Ernest Hemingway

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (15 September 1927); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Women , Men , Books , Hope

“I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.”

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

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

Life

“All good books have one thing in common — they are truer than if they had really happened.”

Ernest Hemingway

Pt. 2, Ch. 7 - Similar to his remark in "A Letter from Cuba" (1934)
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Books

“One battle doesn't make a campaign but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole goddamn war.”

Ernest Hemingway

Papa Hemingway (1966)

War , Books

“The only thing that could spoil a day was people…. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 5

People , Spring , Happiness

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“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

“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.