Quotes by Ernest Hemingway

I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some kind for the cleansing of us all.

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.

We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it anymore.

You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldnt wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.

Let me tell you something. You wont mind, will you? Dont have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you cant have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you cant remember what the other persons said. Youll never be able to remember conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know its awfully hard. But remember, its for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. Im going to England without a protest. All for literature.

He did not want them themselves really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell any more lies. It wasnt worth it.

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

I had an inheritance from my father,It was the moon and the sun.And though I roam all over the world,The spending of it’s never done.

I think you have more fun as a human being even though it is much more painful.

The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, because he enjoys music and because he likes to dance.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

Youre an expatriate. Youve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.

Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book.

We were no longer, technically, children although in many ways I am quite sure that we were. Childish has become a term of contempt. Dont be childish, darling. I hope to Christ I am. Dont be childish yourself. It is possible to be grateful that no one that you would willingly associate with you say, Be mature. Be well-balanced, be well-adjusted. Africa, being as old as it is, makes all people except the professional invaders and spoilers into children. No one says to anyone in Africa, Why dont you grow up? . . . Men know that they are children in relation to the country and, as in armies, seniority and senility ride close together. But to have the heart of a child is not a disgrace. It is an honor. A man must comport himself as a man. . . . But it is never a reproach that he has kept a childs heart, a childs honesty and a childs freshness and nobility.

I thought youd be interested in these things as a government man. Aint you mixed up in the prices of things we eat or something? Aint that it? Making them more costly or something. Making the grits cost more and the grunts less?

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

Creations probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.

She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after everyone elses eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.