Quotessence
Home / Books / The Hemingway Collection

The Hemingway Collection

Book by Ernest Hemingway · 16 quotes · Ifs, Men, Writing

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsMenWritingKnowsFeelsWineMoveable FeastTollsWhom The Bell TollsAfternoonDiesGreat WineHas BeensOld ManPeopleSaidStoriesWarWayWells

The Hemingway Collection Quotes

“I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.”

IfsWayTryingBelieveWellsStoriesFeelingsBeautifulAliveUglyCriticizeBeautiful YouActual Life
Book:The Hemingway Collection
Create image

“Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.”

PeopleIfsLoveMayDoeSpeakWishAirFoolAll ThingsRidiculousConfusionTime LoveBladder
Book:The Hemingway Collection
Create image

“The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there.”

IfsIdeasWould BeBehindsMirrorsDrinkingTongueBarsUnconsciousThroatDrankWhiskey
Book:The Hemingway Collection
Create image

“When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you. . . . Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you. After being severely wounded two weeks before my nineteenth birthday I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it then I could do it too and the best thing was not to worry about it.”

PeopleIfsKnowsMenFirstsTwoWarDoneHappensLosesBoysWorryHappenedWeekIllusionFirst TimeBest ThingsImmortalityWoundedTwo WeeksBad Times
Book:The Hemingway Collection
Create image