Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Ernest Hemingway has been my favorite author for most of my life.  Not only is he a fantastic writer, but his outlook on life and way of portraying that to his readers is something I love.  I just found a bunch of quotes from him and picked some of my favorites to share.




"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?" 
— Ernest Hemingway


"I drink to make other people more interesting." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"All thinking men are atheists." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"Never confuse movement with action." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"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." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. " 
— Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)


"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
— Ernest Hemingway


"But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose." 
— Ernest Hemingway


"In order to write about life first you must live it." 
— Ernest Hemingway