Ernest Hemingway is one of the most important writers in history . This author is one of the great references of American literature, known for works such as The Old Man and the Sea or Farewell to Arms, and winner of a Nobel Prize and a Pulitzer Prize.

Ernest Hemingway’s most memorable phrases

In the following lines you will find a selection of phrases by Ernest Hemingway to soak up the mentality and genius of this great writer.

Always do soberly what you said you were going to do drunk. That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.

A piece of advice full of humor.

2. The most painful thing is getting lost in the process of loving someone too much and forgetting that they are special too.

Every person exists beyond the emotions we feel for them.

3. Why, honey, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.

About the bonds of dependency created by love .

4. The first cure for a mismanaged nation is currency inflation; the second is war. Both bring temporary wealth; both bring permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

A critique of the dialectic between prosperity and misery.

5. Going to another country makes no difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. It’s not possible.

Problems don’t go away just because you move.

6. The best way to know if you can trust someone is to trust them.

To trust someone you have to make a sacrifice and take the first step.

7. Why do old people wake up so early? Is it to have a longer day?

An appreciation based on personal experience of the everyday.

8. All my life I’ve seen the words as if I were seeing them for the first time.

A way to experience language as a constant flow.

9. When writing a novel, a writer must create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.

Literature seen as a different plane of existence.

10. The world breaks us all, and then many are strong in the broken places.

Strengths appear from mistakes or emotional wounds .

11. There is nothing noble about being superior to your neighbor; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

The competition that is worthwhile is the one that takes place with oneself.

12. I may not be as strong as I think, but I know a lot of tricks and I have a resolution.

An optimistic view of the future.

13. Try to understand. You’re not a tragedy character.

Not everything that happens to us happens because the world revolves around us.

14. We are all apprentices in a trade in which no one becomes a master.

It’s impossible to achieve absolute mastery.

15. Wisdom, power and knowledge have a secret, it is humility.

Being humble leads us to persist.

16. Do you ever get the feeling that your whole life is going by and you are not taking advantage of it? Do you realize that you have lived almost half of the time you have to live?

An appreciation of what a life well lived is.

17. Live the full life of the mind, exalted by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

One of Ernest Hemingway’s phrases focused on a positive message.

18. I love to sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

A very personal statement.

19. It’s good to have an end of the road to go to; but it’s the journey that matters, in the end.

The goal is not as important as the process.

20. When you start living outside yourself, everything is dangerous.

Leaving the comfort zone has its costs.

21. Now is not the time to think about what you don’t have. Think about what you can do with it.

Obsessing over what is missing does not help progress.

22. The hard part of writing a novel is finishing it.

Tying up loose ends and creating something that makes sense of all of the above is the tricky part.

23. If the others heard me talking aloud, they would think I was crazy. But since I’m not, I don’t care.

What others think is not as important as we usually think.

24. There’s nothing to write. All you do is sit in front of a typewriter and bleed.

Writing can be simply expressing our emotional side.

25. I drink to make other people more interesting.

A humorous phrase about social relationships.

26. I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you forever, but I never saw you before.

An apparent paradox.

27. It’s silly not to have hope. It’s a sin not to think.

You can’t live without expecting something.

28. I’m not unfaithful, honey. I have many faults, but I’m very faithful. You’ll be sick of me, I’ll be very faithful.

A quality to be claimed.

29. I’m not brave anymore, honey. I’m all broken up. I’ve been broken.

Bad experiences can lead us to stop wanting to face our fears.

30. The most ruthless beings are always the sentimental ones.

An aphorism for reflection.

31. I am trying in all my stories to convey the feeling of real life, not only to represent life, or criticize, but to make it really alive.

In a few lines of text inhabits a universe.

32. Worry a little every day and you’ll lose a couple of years in life. If something’s wrong, fix it if you can. But be prepared not to worry: worrying never fixes anything.

Obsessions, in themselves, are useless if they don’t lead to action.

33. Every day is a new day. It’s better to be lucky. But I prefer to be realistic. Then, when luck comes, you’re ready.

Meeting realistic expectations makes us more stable.

34. All thinking men are atheists.

An opinion about religiosity.

35. Courage is grace under pressure.

Interesting metaphor about difficult moments.

36. Never think that war, no matter how necessary or justified, is not a crime.

There are contexts that are inherently bad.

37. But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

An important nuance.

38. Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do. Don’t confuse movement with action.

It’s better not to be fooled.

39. It is two different things to know a name and to know what is in its head.

Knowing someone doesn’t mean we know exactly what they think.

40. Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

A reflection on intelligence.

41. We’re all broken, that’s how the light comes in.

A metaphor about how through wounds we grow.

42. That terrible state of depression, being good or being bad, is what is known as the artist’s reward.

About the tormented character of many artists.

43. In a writer’s office the trash can is the best piece of furniture.

Funny observation about the writer’s task .

44. The important thing is to become a teacher in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

The best of two ages.

45. No friend is as loyal as a book.

A source of knowledge.

46. Good people, if we think about it a little, are always happy people.

About kindness.

47. The first draft of anything is bullshit.

Don’t get discouraged.

48. There is something that differentiates the rich man from others: the rich man has money.

A differentiation that emphasizes the similarities.

49. Forget your personal tragedy. We’re all angry.

Going beyond individuality.

50. Every man’s life ends the same way. Only the details of how he lived and how he died distinguish one man from another.

About what makes us memorable .

51. A ton of crazy. That’s what poets are. That’s the way it should be. You can’t put a ton of crazy in the nuthouse.

A way to channel non-normative ways of thinking.

52. A cat has absolute emotional honesty: humans, for one reason or another, can hide their feelings, but a cat cannot.

About the repressed character of the human being.

53. The most horrible thing there is is the blank sheet of paper.

Starting to write is very complicated.

54. Every man who begins to live in a serious way on the inside also begins to lead a simpler life on the outside.

Another one of Hemingway’s phrases that shows a paradox.

55. I like to listen. I learned a lot by listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Standing and watching helps us grow.

56. All you have to do is write a true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.

Starting from something that is true helps to string together more statements.

57. The world is a good place and worth fighting for.

About the need to strive to improve the world .

58. For some time now I’ve been trying to write as best I can. Sometimes I have the good fortune to write the best I can.

A sign of this artist’s humility.

59.

34. All thinking men are atheists.

An opinion about religiosity.

35.
Courage is grace under pressure.

Interesting metaphor about difficult moments.

36. Never think that war, no matter how necessary or justified, is not a crime.

There are contexts that are inherently bad.

37. But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

An important nuance.

38. Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do. Don’t confuse movement with action.

It’s better not to be fooled.

39. It is two different things to know a name and to know what is in its head.

Knowing someone doesn’t mean we know exactly what they think.

40. Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

A reflection on intelligence.

41. We’re all broken, that’s how the light comes in.

A metaphor about how through wounds we grow.

42. That terrible state of depression, being good or being bad, is what is known as the artist’s reward.

About the tormented character of many artists.

43. In a writer’s office the trash can is the best piece of furniture.

Funny observation about the writer’s task .

44. The important thing is to become a teacher in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

The best of two ages.

70. When people talk, they listen completely. Most people never listen.

Attending to everything that flows in communication allows for better understanding.

71. Talent is the way you live your life.

Talent applies to everything.

72. You’re so brave and quiet, I forget you’re suffering.

Appearances can alienate us.

73. An intelligent man is sometimes forced to drink to spend time with the fools.

Another observation of literal interpretation.

74. So far, on morality, I only know that what is moral is what makes you feel good afterwards and what is immoral is what makes you feel bad afterwards.

A very simple way to understand morality.

75. But life isn’t hard to handle when you have nothing to lose.

About what we do to live life.

76. All truly evil things begin in innocence.

Innocence can lead us to build a perverse morality.

77. The older we get, the harder it is for us to have heroes, but it’s a kind of necessity.

The referents we admire lead us to develop.

78. I love to sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

A nice metaphor.

79. The sea is sweet and beautiful, but it can also be cruel.

The personification of the sea to express how we live it.

80. Despite not following his dictates, man always has a heart.

Feelings always count.

81. There’s not one thing that’s true. It’s all true.

A relativistic way of looking at things.

82. He lives the life of the full mind, exalted by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

Novelty feeds our minds.

83. If two people love each other there can’t be a happy ending.

A tragic vision about love.

84. They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country. But in modern warfare, there is nothing sweet or proper about your death. You’ll die like a dog for no good reason.

A tragic way of seeing the world as a meaningless place.