Ernest Hemingway quotes

The three of us sat at the table, and it seemed as though about six people were missing.

“The Purple Land” is a very sinister book if read too late in life.

Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that.

This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.

That is the secret. You must get to know the values.

Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.

Ought not to daunt you. Never be daunted. Secret of my success. Never been daunted. Never been daunted in public.

The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky.

You couldn’t see the sea. It was too far away. You could see only hills and more hills, and you knew where the sea was.

I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.

“It would be like betting on the war,” I said. “You don’t need any economic interest.”

Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.

You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.

Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights.

That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality.

I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to help anything.

“I know it,” Romero said. “I’m never going to die.”

“My God!” said Brett, “the things a woman goes through.”

I looked and saw her coming through the crowd in the square, walking, her head up, as though the fiesta were being staged in her honor, and she found it pleasant and amusing.

“I’m damned bad for a religious atmosphere,” Brett said. “I’ve the wrong type of face.”

It was all so slow and so controlled. It was as though he were rocking the bull to sleep.

“Some people have God,” I said. “Quite a lot.”

“I’m going back to Mike.” I could feel her crying as I held her close. “He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful. He’s my sort of thing.”

Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason.

“Where are the foreigners?” Robert Cohn asked. “We’re the foreigners,” Bill said.