The 84 best quotes by Ernest Hemingway

This master of American literature reflected on the most varied topics.

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most important writers in history.. This author is one of the great references of American literature, known for works such as The Old Man and the Sea or A Farewell to Arms, and winner of a Nobel Prize and a Pulitzer Prize.

Ernest Hemingway's most memorable phrases.

In the following lines you will find a selection of Ernest Hemingway's phrases to soak up the mentality and genius of this great writer.

1. Always do sober what you said you were going to do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

A humorous piece of advice.

2. The most painful thing is to get lost in the process of loving someone too much and forget that they are special too.

Each person exists beyond the emotions we feel for them.

3. Why, honey, I don't live at all when I'm not with you.

About the bonds of dependence created with love.

4. The first cure for a mismanaged nation is currency inflation; the second is war. Both bring temporary wealth; both bring permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of opportunistic politicians and economists.

A critique of the dialectic between prosperity and misery.

5. Going to another country makes no difference. I have tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. It is not possible.

Problems don't go away just by moving.

6. The best way to know if you can trust someone is to trust them.

To trust someone you have to make a sacrifice and take the first step.

7. Why do old people wake up so early? Is it to have a longer day?

An appreciation based on personal experience of everyday life.

8. All my life I have seen words as if I were seeing them for the first time.

A way of experiencing language as a constant flow.

9. When writing a novel, a writer must create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.

Literature seen as a different plane of existence.

10. The world breaks us all, and then many are strong in the broken places.

Strengths appear from mistakes or emotional wounds..

11. There is nothing noble in being superior to your neighbor; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

The competition that is worthwhile is the one that takes place with oneself.

12. I may not be as strong as I think I am, but I know many tricks and I have a resolve.

An optimistic look into the future.

13. Try to understand. You are not a character in tragedy.

Not everything that happens to us happens because the world revolves around us.

14. We are all apprentices in a trade in which no one becomes a master.

It is impossible to reach absolute mastery.

15. Wisdom, power and knowledge have a secret, it is humility.

Being humble leads to persistence.

16. Do you ever get the feeling that your whole life is passing you by and you are not making the most of it? Do you realize that you have lived almost half the time you have to live?

An appreciation of what a life well lived is.

17. Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

One of Ernest Hemingway's phrases centered on a positive message.

18. I love to sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

A very personal statement.

19. It's nice to have an end of the journey to go to; but it's the journey that matters, in the end.

The goal is not as important as the process.

20. When you start living outside yourself, everything is dangerous.

Getting out of your comfort zone has its costs.

21. Now is not the time to think about what you don't have. Think about what you can do with it.

Obsessing about what is missing does not help you to progress.

22. The hard part of writing a novel is finishing it.

Tying up the loose ends and creating something that makes sense of everything that came before is the hard part.

23. If others heard me talking out loud, they would think I was crazy. But since I'm not, I don't care.

What other people think is not as important as it often seems to us.

24. There is nothing to write. All you do is sit in front of a typewriter and bleed.

Writing can simply be expressing our emotional side.

25. I drink to make other people more interesting.

A humorous phrase about social relationships.

26. I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you forever, but I had never seen you before.

A seeming paradox.

27. It is foolish not to hope. It is a sin not to think.

It is a sin not to live without hope.

28. I am not unfaithful, my dear. I have many faults, but I am very faithful. You'll be sick of me, I'll be very faithful.

A quality to claim.

29. I'm not brave anymore, honey. I'm all broken. I've been broken.

Bad experiences can lead us to stop wanting to face our fears.

30. The most ruthless beings are always the sentimental ones.

An aphorism to reflect on.

31. I am trying in all my stories to convey the feeling of real life, not only to represent life, or to criticize, but to make it really alive.

In a few lines of text dwells a universe.

32. Worry a little every day and in life you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But be prepared not to worry: worrying never fixes anything.

Obsessions, in and of themselves, are useless if they don't lead to action.

33. Every day is a new day. It's better to be lucky. But I prefer to be realistic. Then, when luck comes, you're ready.

Adjusting to realistic expectations makes us more stable.

34. All thinking men are atheists.

An opinion about religiosity.

35. Courage is grace under pressure.

Interesting metaphor about difficult times.

36. Never think that war, no matter how necessary or justified, is not a crime.

There are contexts that are inherently evil.

37. But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

An important nuance.

38. Do not do what you sincerely do not want to do. Movement should not be confused with action.

It is better not to deceive yourself.

39. Knowing a name and knowing what is in his head are two different things.

Knowing someone does not lead us to know exactly what he thinks.

40. Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

A reflection on intelligence.

41. We are all broken, that's how the light enters.

A metaphor about how through wounds we grow.

42. That terrible state of depression, being good or being bad, is what is known as the artist's reward.

About the tormented character of many artists.

43. In a writer's office the wastepaper basket is the best piece of furniture.

Funny observation on the writer's task.

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

The best of two ages.

45. There is no friend so loyal as a book.

A source of knowledge.

46. Good people, if we think about it a little, are always cheerful people.

About kindness.

47. The first draft of anything sucks.

Don't get discouraged.

48. There is something that differentiates the rich from others: the rich have money.

A differentiation that emphasizes the similarities.

49. Forget your personal tragedy. We are all angry.

Go beyond individuality.

50. Every man's life ends the same way. Only the details of how he lived and how he died distinguish one man from another.

About what makes us memorable.

51. A ton of madness. That's what poets are. That's how they should be. You can't put a ton of crazy in the loony bin.

A way to channel non-normative ways of thinking.

52. A cat has absolute emotional honesty: humans, for one reason or another, can hide their feelings, but a cat cannot.

On the repressed character of the human being.

53. The most horrible thing is the blank sheet of paper.

To begin to write is very complicated.

54. Every man who begins to live a serious life on the inside also begins to live a simpler life on the outside.

Another of Hemingway's phrases that show a paradox.

55. I like to listen. I learned a lot by listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Stopping and observing helps us grow.

56. All you have to do is write a true prayer. Write the truest sentence you know.

Starting with something that is true helps you string more statements together.

57. The world is a good place and worth fighting for.

About the need to strive to improve the world.

58. For some time now I have been trying to write as best I can. Sometimes I have the good fortune to write the best I can.

A sample of the humility of this artist.

59. Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than an insult applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or that seems to differ from their moral concepts.

An opinion about rationalized subjectivity.

It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to be silent.

Another aphorism full of a sense of humor based on irony.

61. No weapon has ever established a moral problem. A solution can be imposed, but it cannot be guaranteed to be just.

The use of force adds nothing to debates about morality or ethics, it simply imposes a choice.

62. You don't know it yet, but you love me.

A perspective on the romantic that goes beyond the logic of time.

63. A man has to suffer a great deal of grief to write a funny book.

Another paradox about literature.

64. I felt that loneliness that one feels at the end of a day of life that one has wasted.

A bitter feeling.

65. As a writer, you must not judge, you must understand.

Going beyond moral assessments helps to understand different points of view.

66. My goal is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Less is more.

67. Never go on a trip with someone you don't love.

A recommendation that can be seen as a metaphor for life.

68. If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris when you were young, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, as Paris is a moveable feast.

An experience that can change lives.

69. Write hard and clear about what hurts.

The rawness helps establish an emotional connection.

70. When people talk, listen fully. Most people never listen.

Attend to everything that flows in the communication. allows for a better understanding.

71. Talent is the way you live your life.

Talent applies to everything.

72. You are so brave and calm that I forget that you are suffering.

Appearances can distance us.

73. An intelligent man is sometimes forced to drink to spend time with fools.

Another observation of literal interpretation.

74. So far, about morality, I only know that what is moral is what makes you feel good afterwards and what is immoral is what makes you feel bad afterwards.

A very simple way of understanding morality.

75. But life is not hard to handle when you have nothing to lose.

About what we do to live life.

76. All truly wicked things start from innocence.

Innocence can lead us to construct a perverse morality.

77. The older we get, the harder it is for us to have heroes, but it is a kind of necessity.

The references we look up to lead us to develop.

78. I love to sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

A nice metaphor.

79. The sea is sweet and it is beautiful, but it can also be cruel.

The personification of the sea to express how we live it.

80. In spite of not following its dictates, man always has a heart.

Feelings always count.

81. There is no one thing that is true. Everything is true.

A relativistic way of looking at things.

82. Live the full life of the mind, exalted by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

Novelty feeds our mind.

83. If two people love each other there can be no happy ending.

A tragic view of love.

84. They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and proper to die for one's country. But in modern warfare, there is nothing sweet or proper about your death. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

A tragic way to see the world as a meaningless place.