Quotes from Islands in the Stream

Ernest Hemingway ·  448 pages

Rating: (11.3K votes)


“Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“And you treat me wonderfully and keep all your promises.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“You never understand anybody that loves you.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“And chase hard and good and with no mistakes and do not overrun them.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream



“Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I'll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“They are not sorrows, so much as terrible things.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well." – Thomas Hudson”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream



“Out of all the things you could not have there were some that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“After he and this girl split up in Paris, Roger was on the town; really on the town. He joked about it and made fun of himself; but he was very angry inside for having made such a profound fool of himself and he took his talent for being faithful to people, which was the best one he had, next to the ones for painting and writing and his various good human and animal traits, and beat and belaboured that talent miserably. He was no good to anyone when he was on the town, especially to himself, and he knew it and hated it and he took pleasure in pulling down the pillars of the temple. It was a very good and strongly built temple and when it is constructed inside yourself it is not so easy to pull down. But he did as good a job as he could.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“— Тъжен ли сте? — полюбопитствува тя.
— Не.
— Замислен?
— Може би малко. Не зная.
— В ден като днешния не заслужава изобщо да се мисли.
— Съгласен съм. Няма да мисля. Мога ли да наблюдавам вълните?
— Вълните са волни.
— Искате ли да влезем още веднъж?
— По-късно.
— Кой ви е учил да плувате?
— Вие.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“— Скажи мне, Том. Что тебя так огорчает?
— El mundo enterо (Весь мир).”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream



“Нужно находить главное в себе самом, где бы ты ни был.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


“Ma di cosa sei fatta, tu?"
"Di quello che ami" disse lei. "Più l'acciaio.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream


About the author

Ernest Hemingway
Born place: in Oak Park, Illinois, The United States
Born date July 21, 1899
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“You left me this mad girl, and I love her well. She is braver and wilder than any of my sons.”
― Katherine Arden, quote from The Bear and the Nightingale


“The feel of the sticky wetness down there when she moved made her grimace. God, she wanted to get cleaned up. In a hurry.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Tommyknockers


“after you stop believing in santa claus, the whole world just goes downhill”
― Tom Clancy, quote from The Sum of All Fears


“How very American, he thought, to look at a disease as homosexual or heterosexual, as if viruses had the intelligence to choose between different inclinations of human behavior.”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic


“When we're in a human body, we don't care about universal collapse - instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke, the arrangement of hair.”
― David Eagleman, quote from Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives


Interesting books

Don't Waste Your Life
(21.7K)
Don't Waste Your Lif...
by John Piper
The Adolescent
(4.6K)
The Adolescent
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My Life Undecided
(2.3K)
My Life Undecided
by Jessica Brody
Wired
(13K)
Wired
by Douglas E. Richards
The Complete Illuminated Books
(2.8K)
The Complete Illumin...
by William Blake
A World Apart
(4.3K)
A World Apart
by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.