1898-1961, American Writer
A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.
Ernest Hemingway – [Paradise]


A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway – [Defeat]


A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Ernest Hemingway – [Comedy and Comedians]


A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
Ernest Hemingway – [Writers and Writing]


Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
Ernest Hemingway – [Dictionaries]


All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Ernest Hemingway – [Books and Reading]


All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.
Ernest Hemingway – [Literature]


All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Ernest Hemingway – [Words]


All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
Ernest Hemingway – [Words]


All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.
Ernest Hemingway – [Critics and Criticism]


All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
Ernest Hemingway – [Innocence]


All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently . Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.
Ernest Hemingway – [Literature]


Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Ernest Hemingway – [Alcohol and Alcoholism]


As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
Ernest Hemingway – [Age and Aging]


Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.
Ernest Hemingway – [Sports]


Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway – [Courage]


Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
Ernest Hemingway – [Coward and Cowardice]


Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
Ernest Hemingway – [Decadence]


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. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does? The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
Ernest Hemingway – [Alcohol and Alcoholism]


Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.
Ernest Hemingway – [Exaggeration]

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