Ernest Hemingway quotes about disillusionment

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

I was going to forget the war. I had made a separate peace.

No I’m not. But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

“Let’s drop the war.” “It’s very hard. There’s no place to drop it.”

What is defeat? You go home.

War is not won by victory. What if we take San Gabriele? What if we take the Carso and Monfalcone and Trieste? Where are we then?

He was a legitimate hero who bored every one he met.

We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There isn’t always an explanation for everything.”

“Wine is a grand thing,” I said. “It makes you forget all the bad.”

I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards.

Well, I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me.

There are some people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers. It is with them that war is made.

They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start.

“If everybody would not attack the war would be over,” Manera said.

I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.

“They may crack,” she said. “Anybody may crack.”

“No,” I said. “I was blown up while we were eating cheese.”

It is never hopeless. But sometimes I cannot hope. I try always to hope but sometimes I cannot.