Quotes from The Complete Short Stories

“My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“To be able to say: I loved this person, we had a hell of a nice time together, it’s over but in a way it will never be over and I do know that I for sure loved this person, to be able to say that and mean it, that’s rare, señor. That’s rare and valuable.”

— Ernest Hemingway, from The Complete Short Stories ”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“You don't have to destroy me. Do you? ...”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“You bitch,' he said. 'You rich bitch. That's poetry. I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“I wanted to try this new drink: That's all we do, isn't it - look at things and try new drinks?”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.

'It's a bore,' he said out loud.

'What is, my dear?'

'Anything you do too bloody long.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? ...”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.'

'What did you say?'

'I said we could have everything.'

'We can have everything.'

'No, we can't.'

'We can have the whole world.'

'No, we can't.'

'We can go everywhere.'

'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.'

'It's ours.'

'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“He thought about alone in Constantinople that time, having quarreled in Paris before he had gone out. He had whored the whole time and then, when that was over, and he had failed to kill his loneliness, but only made it worse, he had written her, the first one, the one who left him, a letter telling her how he had never been able to kill it . . . . How when he thought he saw her outside the Regence one time it made him go all faint and sick inside, and that he would follow a woman that looked like her in some way, along the Boulevard, afraid to see it was not she, afraid to lose the feeling it gave him. How every one he had slept with had only made him miss her more. How what she had done could never matter since he could never cure himself of loving her.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“I wanted it so much. I don’t know why I wanted it so much.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“Do you feel better?' he asked.

'I feel fine,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“None of it was important now. The wind blew it out of his head.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“For sale: baby shoes, never used.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“If I do it you won't ever worry?'

'I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple.'

"Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“Be a damn fire eater now. He'd seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“You're remembering well today,' she said. 'Don't do it too much.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“He was going to sleep a little while. He lay still and death was not there. It must have gone around another street. It went in pairs, on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the pavements.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“He had been contemptuous of those who wrecked. You did not have to like it because you understood it. He could beat anything, he thought, because no thing could hurt him if he did not care.

All right. Now he would not care for death. One thing he had always dreaded was the pain. He could stand pain as well as any man, until it went on too long, and wore him out, but here he had something that had hurt frightfully and just when he had felt it breaking him, the pain had stopped.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“And this,' he was saying aloud. 'And this. And this.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

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Popular quotes

“A volte mi chiedo se la realtà esiste davvero, se c'è varamente una natura delle cose, obiettiva e intatta. O se tutto ciò che ci accade è già modificato in anticipo dalla nostra immaginazione. Se sognando qualcosa gli diamo vita.”
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“For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: ‘I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.’ Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong.”
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“If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;

If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;

And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?”
― The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quote from The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

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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.

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