Ernest Hemingway · 189 pages
Rating: (316.9K votes)
“you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
“I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.”
“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”
“Isn't it pretty to think so.”
“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
“Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
“Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
“This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.”
“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”
“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
“Never fall in love?"
"Always," said the count. "I am always in love.”
“You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development.”
“Oh, darling, I've been so miserable.”
“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”
“He'll never be frightened. He knows too damn much.”
“I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together”
“You are all a lost generation.
[with credit to Gertrude Stein]”
“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch."
"Yes."
"It's sort of what we have instead of God.”
“She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.”
“I say that is wine," Brett held up her glass. "We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.'"
"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. you don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. you lose the taste."
Brett's glass was empty.”
“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.”
“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.”
“The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals”
“This is a hell of dull talk...How about some of that champagne?”
“You ought to dream. All our biggest businessmen have been dreamers.”
“The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.”
“that every moment of every day, depending on the faith we embrace, each of us continues to live either by the merciful sufferance of God or at the whim of blind chance and indifferent nature. She”
“nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.”
“I’m learning that “myth” doesn’t mean what I thought it did. It really means, “based on truth” and the truth is terrifying.”
“IT’S ONE of those moments where life seems to pause, and the universe opens its mouth and vomits comprehension on you.”
“But that’s precisely what you’re doing. Listen, if you walk into a whorehouse and find yourself getting sucked off, it’s because you put some money on the counter, not because the gods transported a pair of lips to your cock.” “That’s … a really incredible metaphor, Jean, but I think I could use some help translating it.”
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.