Top 500 Ernest Hemingway Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?”

— Ernest Hemingway

352. “Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.”

— Ernest Hemingway

353. “If a writer stops observing, he is finished.”

— Ernest Hemingway

354. “In every port in the world, at least two Estonians can be found.”

— Ernest Hemingway

355. “When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

— Ernest Hemingway

356. “Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife underhand into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all the furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

357. “Remember to get the weather in your damn book-weather is very important.”

— Ernest Hemingway

358. “Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.”

— Ernest Hemingway

359. “Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

— Ernest Hemingway

360. “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.”

— Ernest Hemingway

361. “If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

— Ernest Hemingway

362. “Romance was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes.”

— Ernest Hemingway

363. “I wanted to try this new drink: That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?”

— Ernest Hemingway

364. “Drinking is a way of ending the day.”

— Ernest Hemingway

365. “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”

— Ernest Hemingway

366. “Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, “What will you have, sir?” And I said, “A glass of hemlock.””

— Ernest Hemingway

367. “Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.”

— Ernest Hemingway

368. “The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.”

— Ernest Hemingway

369. “There isn’t any me. I’m you. Don’t make up a separate me.”

— Ernest Hemingway

370. “But I think the Great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.”

— Ernest Hemingway

371. “A severed femoral artery empties itself faster than you can believe.”

— Ernest Hemingway

372. “Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

373. “The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.”

— Ernest Hemingway

374. “There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.”

— Ernest Hemingway

375. “God knows I didn’t mean to fall in love with her.”

— Ernest Hemingway

376. “But you always fall for somebody else and then it’s all right. Fall for them but don’t let them ruin you.”

— Ernest Hemingway

377. “It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

— Ernest Hemingway

378. “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.”

— Ernest Hemingway

379. “Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.”

— Ernest Hemingway

380. “I felt very lonely when they were all there.”

— Ernest Hemingway

381. “Wars are caused by undefended wealth.”

— Ernest Hemingway

382. “Let’s not talk about how I am. It’s a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore.”

— Ernest Hemingway

383. “A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

384. “Your blood coagulates beautifully.”

— Ernest Hemingway

385. “In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.”

— Ernest Hemingway

386. “Good dialogue is not real speech-it’s the illusion of real speech.”

— Ernest Hemingway

387. “Ascensions into heaven are like falling leaves sad and happy all at the same time Going away isn’t really sad especially when your going enables a new kind of presence to be born.”

— Ernest Hemingway

388. “We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.”

— Ernest Hemingway

389. “He’ll never be frightened. He knows too damn much.”

— Ernest Hemingway

390. “Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.”

— Ernest Hemingway

391. “I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.”

— Ernest Hemingway

392. “Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.”

— Ernest Hemingway

393. “Don’t you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure.”

— Ernest Hemingway

394. “Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your reserves.”

— Ernest Hemingway

395. “Keep right on lying to me. That’s what I want you to do.”

— Ernest Hemingway

396. “In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style.”

— Ernest Hemingway

397. “It’s harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.”

— Ernest Hemingway

398. “God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature.”

— Ernest Hemingway

399. “The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.”

— Ernest Hemingway

400. “I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.”

— Ernest Hemingway