Top 500 Ernest Hemingway Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves.”

— Ernest Hemingway

252. “There is no such thing as great writing – there is only great re-writing!”

— Ernest Hemingway

253. “A bottle of wine was good company.”

— Ernest Hemingway

254. “Find the best writers, pay them to write, and avoid typos at all costs.”

— Ernest Hemingway

255. “I write description in longhand because that’s hardest for me and you’re closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.”

— Ernest Hemingway

256. “The echoes of beauty you’ve seen transpire, Resound through dying coals of a campfire.”

— Ernest Hemingway

257. “One cat just leads to another. The place is so damned big it doesn’t really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time.”

— Ernest Hemingway

258. “Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.”

— Ernest Hemingway

259. “How lazily the sun goes down in Granada, it hides beneath the water, it conceals in the Alhambra!”

— Ernest Hemingway

260. “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.”

— Ernest Hemingway

261. “And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.”

— Ernest Hemingway

262. “You’ll lose it, if you talk about it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

263. “I’ve been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?”

— Ernest Hemingway

264. “If my Valentine you won’t be, I’ll hang myself on your Christmas tree.”

— Ernest Hemingway

265. “You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.”

— Ernest Hemingway

266. “All a man has is pride. Sometimes you have it so much it is a sin. We have all done things for pride that we knew were impossible. We didn’t care. But a man must implement his pride with intelligence and care.”

— Ernest Hemingway

267. “After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.”

— Ernest Hemingway

268. “The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.”

— Ernest Hemingway

269. “He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.”

— Ernest Hemingway

270. “Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because that gives you perspective.”

— Ernest Hemingway

271. “Nobody knows what’s in him until he tries to pull it out. If there’s nothing, or very little, the shock can kill a man.”

— Ernest Hemingway

272. “To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material.”

— Ernest Hemingway

273. “I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be.”

— Ernest Hemingway

274. “I am like a blind pig when I work.”

— Ernest Hemingway

275. “Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.”

— Ernest Hemingway

276. “Anyone can be a fisherman in May.”

— Ernest Hemingway

277. “Love is something that hangs up behind the bathroom door and smells of Lysol.”

— Ernest Hemingway

278. “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.”

— Ernest Hemingway

279. “There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you.”

— Ernest Hemingway

280. “I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

281. “I’m not unfaithful, darling. I’ve plenty of faults but I’m very faithful. You’ll be sick of me I’ll be so faithful.”

— Ernest Hemingway

282. “You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”

— Ernest Hemingway

283. “You know I don’t love any one but you. You shouldn’t mind because some one else loved me.”

— Ernest Hemingway

284. “You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”

— Ernest Hemingway

285. “You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.”

— Ernest Hemingway

286. “So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.”

— Ernest Hemingway

287. “That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.”

— Ernest Hemingway

288. “Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.”

— Ernest Hemingway

289. “I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains.”

— Ernest Hemingway

290. “Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them.”

— Ernest Hemingway

291. “He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

292. “All our words from loose using have lost their edge.”

— Ernest Hemingway

293. “All bad writers are in love with the epic.”

— Ernest Hemingway

294. “Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.”

— Ernest Hemingway

295. “I love thee and thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be with thee that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving thee.”

— Ernest Hemingway

296. “People fall in love, but have to climb out.”

— Ernest Hemingway

297. “You’ve such a lovely temperature.”

— Ernest Hemingway

298. “And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.”

— Ernest Hemingway

299. “You never understand anybody that loves you.”

— Ernest Hemingway

300. “What is moral is what you feel good after.”

— Ernest Hemingway