Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk
Ernest Hemingway Novelist
Gender: Male
Citizenship: United States
Born: Jul 21, 1899
Died: Jul 2, 1961
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms.
In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives.
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
best, good & time
Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?
failure
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
strength
I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.
God
Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.
age
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
intelligence & time
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
love & travel
I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
good
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.
life
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.
success & work
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.
war
A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
funny
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
architecture
It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
business
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
war
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
best & trust
Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.
imagination
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
great & learning
What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
good
All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.
good
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
life & time
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
death
For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.
war
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
great & sports
Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.
time
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.
good
I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
life & love
That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.
good
That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
best
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
death & fear
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
best
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
happiness
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
travel