Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“[Never give up hope. Never give in to pessimism. Never despair.] No horse named Morbid ever won a race!”

“For we have thought the longer thoughts And gone the shorter way. And we have danced to devils' tunes, Shivering home to pray; To serve one master in the night, Another in the day.”

“When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely.”

“You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”

“Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death.”

“Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead.”

“If every one said orders were impossible to carry out when they were received where would you be? Where would we all be if you just said, "Impossible," when orders came?”

“I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.”

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”

“it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”

“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.”

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

“When you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.”

“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.”

“Don't do what you sincerely don't want to do. Never confuse movement with action.”

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”

“Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day's work.”

“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.”

“As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy - happier - today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.”

“I am an old man who will live until I die," Anselmo said.”

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

“I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.”

“The writer's job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.”

“Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”