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Ernest Hemingway

an American writer of fiction who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1954 (1899-1961)

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Famous quotes by Ernest Hemingway:Sort:PopularA - Z

Courage is grace under pressure.
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don't ever tell which is which.
There's nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility is being superior to your former self.
To stay in places and to leave, to trust, to distrust, to no longer believe and believe again, . . . to watch the snow come, to watch it go, to hear rain on a tent, to know where I can find what I want.
[What is the definition of guts?] Grace under pressure.
If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.
In order to write about life, first you must live it!
Never confuse movement with action.
Only that which makes you feel bad after doing is immoral.
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.
Time is the least thing we have.
Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports. . . all others are games.
Before we take to the sea, we walk on land. . . Before we create, we must understand. . .
You lose it if you talk about it.
America is the land of wide lawns and narrow minds.
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part.
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
The only thing that can spoil a day is people and if you can keep from making engagements, every day has no limits.
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
'We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood.
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Be fully in the moment,open yourself to the powerful energies dancing around you.
But did thee feel the earth move?
But in modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason.
Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire.
Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
Grace under Pressure.
I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something someone else has done though you might have done it if they hadn't.
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.
Live life to the fullest.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Never mistake motion for action.
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.
Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.
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.
The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly in the only heritage he has to leave.
They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.
When writing a novel a writer should create living people people not characters. A character is a caricature.
When you have a child, the world has a hostage.
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

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