“And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.”
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.
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Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961Related quotes

"Haggard Rides Again", in Time and Tide, Vol. XLI (3 September 1960)

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
“Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”
Source: Endymion (1996), Chapter 44 (p. 449)
Source: Hyperion
Context: “Humanity has evolved—as far as it has evolved,” continued the old priest, “with no thanks to its predecessors or itself. Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”
“Empathy,” Aenea said softly.

Quoted in New York Times (21 February 1960).
Letters and interviews
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 33 (p. 684)

"The Trouble with Man is Man", The New Yorker; reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances