Ernest Hemingway Quotes

American author and journalist (1899–1961)

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Ernest Miller Hemingway (21 July 1899 – 2 July 1961) was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

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Native Name: Ernest Miller Hemingway

Also Known As: Papa

Alternative Names: Hemingway • Ernest Miller Hemmingway • E. M. Hemmingway • E. Hemmingway • E. Hemingway • Ernest M. Hemingway

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Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything.

We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.

I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.

Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

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?

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

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 how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

We are all broken — that’s how the light gets in.