Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

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.

But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

The purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war was floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind in the water.

It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was.

the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

Good-bye, you chaps," Mike said. "It was a damned fine fiesta." "So long, Mike," Bill said. "I'll see you around," I said. "Don't worry about money," Mike said. "You can pay for the car, Jake, and I'll send you my share." "So long, Mike." "So long, you chaps. You've been damned nice." We all shook hands. We waved from the car to Mike. He stood in the road watching.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you. Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

For we have been there in the books and out of the books—and where we go, if we are any good, there you can go as we have been. A country, finally, erodes and the dust blows away, the people all die and none of them were of any importance permanently, except those who practised the arts

He felt the long light body, warm against him, comforting against him, abolishing loneliness against him, magically, by a simple touching of flanks, of shoulders and of feet, making an alliance against death with him.

With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

It is silly not to hope

For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obseessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired enough made it. Now he would never write the things he had saved to write, until he knew enough to write them well

How good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.

The cynical ones are the best companions. But the best of all are the cynical ones when they are still devout; or after; when having been devout, then cynical, they become devout again by cynicism.

Here's the reason why the peasant is wise. He's wise because he's beaten from the very start. Give him power and then you'll see how wise he is.

Then nothing worries you?" "Only being sent away from you. You're my religion. You're all I've got.

I regarded home as a place I left behind in order to come back to it afterward.

I was pretty well through with the subject. At one time or another I had probably considered it from most of its various angles, including the one that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.

I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have. Well, people were that way.

I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things.

He said nothing.