Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois and committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961. He was an American author and journalist whose economical and understated style of writing had a strong influence on much of 20th-century fiction.
He had much to say on many subjects but our LifeDaily team selected these quotes on the specific topics of war, writing, and people.
Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. During his lifetime he published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works were published after his death.
He enlisted in World War I as an ambulance driver but in 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His novel A Farewell to Arms was based on his wartime experiences.
Outside of writing, Hemingway led what could be termed a colorful life. He was married four times and worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris, was a journalist in the Spanish Civil War, and was present at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris.
In 1952 Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes. He was left in pain or ill health for much of the rest of his life and committed suicide in the summer of 1961 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.
Browse through these quotes to understand a little more about Ernest Hemingway:
- An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
- I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
- I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?
- The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
- Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
- There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
- Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
- Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
- 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.
- All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
- For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
- The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
- In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.
- Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.
- I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.
Of course, these quotes of Ernest Hemingway are only a small indication of his character.
During his lifetime his life style, especially his drinking, was legendary. How do you rate him as a writer? Do you have a favorite work of his?
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