Ernest Hemingway · 650 pages
Rating: (31.1K votes)
“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
Ernest Hemingway
Born place: in Oak Park, Illinois, The United States
Born date July 21, 1899
See more on GoodReads
“And nowadays, I keep my promises.”
― Shane Dawson, quote from It Gets Worse: A Collection of Essays
“General, may I take a nap? General, I need a papaya! General, my claws are tired! General, look, a butterfly! SOMEBODY IS GETTING STABBED IN THE FACE IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from The Dark Secret
“Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.”
― Thomas Paine, quote from The Age of Reason
“Don’t think I couldn’t see the love in his eyes when he looked at you. He would have fought to the death for you, that handsome Valten Gerstenberg.”
― Melanie Dickerson, quote from The Captive Maiden
“For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Shepherd's Crown
The Red Tent
The Secret Life of B...
Clockwork Angel
Middlesex
Harry Potter and the...
The Adventures of To...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.
