Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Profoundly inspirational Ernest Hemingway quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.
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Famous Ernest Hemingway Quotes
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. Ernest Hemingway
There is no friend as loyal as a book. Ernest Hemingway
Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. Ernest Hemingway
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. Ernest Hemingway
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. Ernest Hemingway
The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Ernest Hemingway
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. Ernest Hemingway
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. Ernest Hemingway
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists. Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. Ernest Hemingway
The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. Ernest Hemingway
Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. Ernest Hemingway
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. Ernest Hemingway
Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. Ernest Hemingway
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Ernest Hemingway
All things truly wicked start from innocence. Ernest Hemingway
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. Ernest Hemingway
I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. Ernest Hemingway
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
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true story teller who would keep that from you. Ernest Hemingway
Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready. Ernest Hemingway
Man is not made for defeat. Ernest Hemingway
All thinking men are atheists. Ernest Hemingway
Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age. Ernest Hemingway
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ernest Hemingway
If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work. Ernest Hemingway
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one 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
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. Ernest Hemingway
You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason. Ernest Hemingway
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water. Ernest Hemingway
But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. Ernest Hemingway
I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty nine times before I was satisfied. Ernest Hemingway
Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. Ernest Hemingway
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. Ernest Hemingway
Never confuse movement with action. Ernest Hemingway
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. Ernest Hemingway
The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. Ernest Hemingway
Courage is grace under pressure. Ernest Hemingway
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. Ernest Hemingway
A cat has absolute emotional honesty human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. Ernest Hemingway
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it don’t cheat with it. Ernest Hemingway
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. Ernest Hemingway
I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me. Ernest Hemingway
In modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason. Ernest Hemingway
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. Ernest Hemingway
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. Ernest Hemingway
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Ernest Hemingway
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. Ernest Hemingway
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. 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. Ernest Hemingway
Time is the least thing we have of. Ernest Hemingway
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
What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. Ernest Hemingway
No, that is the great fallacy the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful. Ernest Hemingway
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. Ernest Hemingway
So far, 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
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up. Ernest Hemingway
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. Ernest Hemingway
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges. Ernest Hemingway
When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. Ernest Hemingway
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. Ernest Hemingway
The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it. Ernest Hemingway
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. Ernest Hemingway
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
All good books have one thing in common they are truer than if they had really happened. Ernest Hemingway
If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. Ernest Hemingway
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. Ernest Hemingway
It is awfully easy to be hard boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing. Ernest Hemingway
I know now that there is no one thing that is true it is all true. Ernest Hemingway
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s 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
A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. Ernest Hemingway
Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry Worry never fixes anything. Ernest Hemingway
I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You’re grateful for these different chances. Ernest Hemingway
I know the night is not the same as the day that all things are different, that 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. Ernest Hemingway
It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way. Ernest Hemingway
We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other. Ernest Hemingway
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. Ernest Hemingway
You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. Ernest Hemingway
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
Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. Ernest Hemingway
I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know? Ernest Hemingway
Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already? Ernest Hemingway
When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you. Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you. Ernest Hemingway
Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day? Ernest Hemingway
There is no friend as loyal as a book. Ernest Hemingway
It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way. Ernest Hemingway
Never mistake motion for action. Ernest Hemingway
Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual. Ernest Hemingway
You’re beautiful, like a May fly. Ernest Hemingway
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless. Ernest Hemingway
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ernest Hemingway
All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. Ernest Hemingway
The shortest answer is doing the thing. Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And 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
As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary. Ernest Hemingway
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. Ernest Hemingway
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Ernest Hemingway
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
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
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. Ernest Hemingway
