Ernest Hemingway

America is the land of wide lawns and narrow minds.

Humility is not disgraceful, and carries no loss of true pride.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in 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.

When you have a child, the world has a hostage.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

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.

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.

[What is the definition of guts?] Grace under pressure.

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.

Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.

Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.

I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

That is the greatest fallacy, the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change

We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage, and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a man's duty to understand his world rather than to simply fight for it.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.

Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.

Never confuse movement with action.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

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

Grace under Pressure.

Live life to the fullest.

In order to write about life, first you must live it!

But did thee feel the earth move?

I'm not going to climb into the ring with Tolstoy.

To be a successful father there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk.
That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

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 and the only heritage he has to leave.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

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

There's no one thing that is true. They're all true.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Never mistake motion for action.

The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

The writer�s job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.

Courage is grace under pressure.

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.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

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

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

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