Ernest Hemingway remains one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, known for his spare prose and deep insight into courage, love, and the human condition. 

His words continue to inspire readers decades after his passing. This collection brings together some of his most memorable quotes on writing, life, and resilience.

hemingway quotes

 Hemingway’s words are known for cutting straight to the point, and these lines show that gift clearly.

• The way to make people trustworthy is to trust them.
• But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
• The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
• No one you love is ever truly lost.
• Courage is grace under pressure.
• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
• There is no friend as loyal as a book.
• Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
• All good books have one thing in common, they are truer than if they had really happened.

ernest hemingway quotes

 These lines capture Hemingway’s honest, unflinching outlook on life and people.

• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
• In order to write about life, first you must live it.
• When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
• There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man, true nobility is being superior to your former self.
• Always do sober what you said you would do drunk, that will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
• Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.
• Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
• Every man’s life ends the same way, it is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
• We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
• I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.

hemingway quotes (funny)

 Even at his driest, Hemingway had a wit that still lands today.

• When you stop doing things for fun, you might as well be dead.
• Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her.
• I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit, I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
• The first draft of anything is shit.
• I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I am awake.
• Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.
• The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, and the capacity for sacrifice.
• Never trust a man who has not brought a bottle of good wine to dinner.
• A man’s got to know his limits, and then ignore half of them.
• Some of the best advice ever given comes with a drink in hand and no intention of following it.

ernest hemingway

 A short set of lines that sum up who Hemingway was as a writer and a man.

• Cowardice is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
• There is nothing to writing, all you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
• You have always written before, and you will write now, all you have to do is write one true sentence.
• If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows.
• For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can.
• The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
• The most essential gift for a good writer is a built in, shockproof, shit detector.
• As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
• You must learn to write when you do not want to.
• War is not glorious, it is horrible.

ernest hemingway quotes about life

 Hemingway wrote about life with the same honesty he brought to his fiction.

• I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I am not really living it.
• Now is no time to think of what you do not have, think of what you can do with that there is.
• Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years, train yourself not to worry.
• You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
• Life should never daunt you, never be daunted, it is the secret of my success.
• The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for.
• But life is not hard to manage when you have nothing to lose.
• There is no one thing that is true, it is all true.
• Every day above ground is a good day, and every honest sentence is a small victory.
• Some people are born to lose quietly, and some are born to fight until the last page.

ernest hemingway famous quotes

 Some of Hemingway’s most widely quoted lines, drawn straight from his novels and letters.

• Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
• All things truly wicked start from innocence.
• Courage is grace under pressure, hold your head high and continue.
• The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry.
• There are only two places in the world where we can live happy, at home and in Paris.
• If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
• Isn’t it pretty to think so.
• Before you react, think, before you spend, earn, before you criticize, wait, before you quit, try.
• It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.
• If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them.

hemingway quotes on life

 A handful of lines showing Hemingway’s blunt, lived-in view of what life demands.

• So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
• No one you love is ever truly lost.
• The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
• Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those swallows when the ocean can be so cruel.
• Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to the sea.
• The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence.
• Some wounds close, some just learn to carry weight without breaking again.
• Living well is its own quiet form of revenge.
• To live fully is to risk everything, and to risk nothing is not to live at all.

best hemingway quotes

 A short list of the lines readers keep coming back to.

• A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
• Courage is grace under pressure.
• The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
• There is nothing to writing, all you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
• In order to write about life, first you must live it.
• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
• No one you love is ever truly lost.
• There is no friend as loyal as a book.
• Every man’s life ends the same way, it is only the details that distinguish one man from another.

hemmingway quotes

 More of Hemingway’s straightforward wisdom on writing, trust, and living well.

• The way to make people trustworthy is to trust them.
• When people talk, listen completely, most people never listen.
• Cowardice is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
• Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.
• All good books have one thing in common, they are truer than if they had really happened.
• Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
• Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
• We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
• Simplicity is not the absence of depth, it is depth with nothing left to cut away.
• The truest sentence is often the shortest one you were afraid to write.

best ernest hemingway quotes

 A refined shortlist of Hemingway’s sharpest, most repeated lines.

• Courage is grace under pressure, hold your head high and continue.
• The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for.
• If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, it stays with you for the rest of your life.
• The first draft of anything is shit.
• The most essential gift for a good writer is a built in, shockproof, shit detector.
• As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
• There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man, true nobility is being superior to your former self.
• Always do sober what you said you would do drunk.
• War is not glorious, it is horrible.
• Some men are born to write true sentences, and everything after that is just revision.

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hemingway quites

 A few more of Hemingway’s memorable lines on trust, love, and life.

• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
• I am not brave any more darling, I am all broken, they have broken me.
• Why, darling, I do not live at all when I am not with you.
• The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.
• I did not want to kiss you goodbye, that was the trouble, I wanted to kiss you good night, and there is a lot of difference.
• There is no one thing that is true, it is all true.
• Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.
• Now is no time to think of what you do not have, think of what you can do with that there is.
• Love, like grief, asks nothing of us but honesty.
• The heart does not break quietly, it just learns to beat around the wound.

all things truly wicked start from innocence

 This single line is one of Hemingway’s most quoted reflections on how good people slowly lose their way.

• All things truly wicked start from innocence.
• The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
• Cowardice is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
• Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
• It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.
• So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
• Innocence does not stay innocent, it either hardens or it breaks.
• No one sets out to become what they feared, it happens one small choice at a time.
• The line between good and wicked is thinner than most people are willing to admit.
• What starts as a small compromise rarely stays small for long.

famous hemingway quotes

 Lines from Hemingway that have outlived their original pages and now stand on their own.

• Isn’t it pretty to think so.
• The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
• You have always written before and you will write now, all you have to do is write one true sentence.
• There are only two places in the world where we can live happy, at home and in Paris.
• The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry.
• For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can.
• If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows.
• You must learn to write when you do not want to.
• Every sentence he kept was a sentence that earned its place.
• What he left unsaid mattered as much as what he wrote down.

quotes from ernest hemingway

 A closing set pulled straight from Hemingway’s novels and personal letters.

• But life is not hard to manage when you have nothing to lose.
• You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
• Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years, train yourself not to worry.
• I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I am not really living it.
• Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to the sea.
• We are all stronger in the broken places than we ever admit to being.
• The world does not owe you an easy path, only an honest one.
• A quiet life well lived says more than a loud one ever could.
• To write truly is to risk being misunderstood by everyone except the reader who needed it most.
• Grace under pressure is not the absence of fear, it is choosing to move anyway.

famous ernest hemingway quotes

 More of the lines that made Hemingway one of the most quoted writers of all time.

• Never trust a man who has not brought a bottle of good wine to dinner.
• Some of the best advice ever given comes with a drink in hand and no intention of following it.
• As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
• The most essential gift for a good writer is a built in, shockproof, shit detector.
• If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them.
• They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, but in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in dying.
• The truest sentence is often the shortest one you were afraid to write.
• Simplicity is not the absence of depth, it is depth with nothing left to cut away.
• What he left unsaid mattered as much as what he wrote down.
• A man’s got to know his limits, and then ignore half of them.

ernest hemingway quotes good person

 A closing set on the quiet, everyday markers Hemingway associated with true character.

• There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man, true nobility is being superior to your former self.
• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
• The way to make people trustworthy is to trust them.
• Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
• Do not judge a man by his friends, remember that the friends of Judah were impeccable.
• A good person does not need an audience to keep their word.
• Kindness costs nothing and is remembered longer than anything you buy.
• The measure of a man is what he does when no one is keeping score.
• Loyalty is proven in the small moments, not the loud ones.
• Living well is its own quiet form of revenge.

Conclusion

 Hemingway’s words carry the same weight and honesty that defined his novels and short stories. 

About bravery, loss, or the art of writing itself, his quotes still resonate with readers today. We hope this collection gave you a deeper appreciation for his legacy.

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