6 min read ⌚ 

Some people see him as a literary legend, as well as a person that lived legendary life.

Others consider him to have had a sad life, but fruitful career.

In any case, one thing is true: Ernest Hemingway is a name that will keep on living.

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in today’s Oak Park, Illinois.

Although he was raised in a suburb, he spent most of his time in his family’s cabin in northern Michigan, where he learned to fish and hunt.

There, he also developed his love for nature.

He showed interest in literature from early on, and during his high-school years, he started writing for the sports section of the school newspaper.

After he graduated, he continued the same line of work, which can explain his simplistic, journalistic style of writing which one can encounter in all of his novels.

The year before the World War I has ended, he went to serve in it. He was an ambulance driver for the Italian side, and during his posting, he met a nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, whom he proposed to.

However, the acceptance of the proposal was short lived since she soon left him for another man.

This event broke the writer’s heart, but at the same time inspired him and was the basis for his very famous work “A Farewell to Arms.”

At the age of 20, he was already heavily injured by the sufferings he saw during the war and was carrying deep emotional wounds.

After the war, he went to the US and took a job at a newspaper in Chicago. It was there where he met the woman that would become his first spouse.

But, just as up until then, his romance did not last forever.

By the end of his life, he was married four times.

Back to his writing career, shortly after he married for the first marriage, he moved to Paris, continuing to work for the newspaper as its foreign correspondent.

In Paris, he was made Gertrude Stein’s pupil, and he was part of what she would call as “The Lost Generation.”

During this time he met many famous artists of the 20s – and became one of them.

In 1951 after several critically and commercially acclaimed novels, he finally won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Old Man and the Sea.”

Just three years later, he won the Nobel Prize for literature as well.

As you could already notice from this short introduction to Hemingway’s personal life has influenced his literature – many of the things he saw and experienced he used as the basis for his stories.

Now, let’s take a peek at some of the most famous lines from his work and his letters.

Ernest Hemingway Quotes – Top 10

When he was not spending his time writing, which was his first passion, he was filling his life with excitement: bullfighting in Spain, deep-sea fishing in Florida, or hunting in Africa.

He was in several accidents, including plane crashes, but he still continued his adventures.

That is exactly why many people believed he knew how to live.

However, deep down Hemingway was actually a melancholic.

When he retired, his health was already deteriorated. His body was battling with liver disease and high blood pressure because of his drinking habits.

His mental health was not good as well. He was battling depression that ended tragically – with his suicide at the age of 62.

Quotes by Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises

A bottle of wine was good company.

Fake European standards have ruined you. 

Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

He’ll never be frightened. He knows too damn much.

Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had discovered writing.

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Quotes by Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms

Life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.

I’m not brave anymore darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.

Keep right on lying to me. That’s what I want you to do.

I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

I was a little crazy. But I wasn’t crazy in any complicated manner.

When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me. She looked toward the door, saw there was no one, then she sat on the side of the bed and leaned over and kissed me.

Quotes by Ernest Hemingway – Death in the Afternoon

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

A writer who omits things only because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. 

Quotes by Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls

There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.

You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything.

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

And what did last? I last, she thought. Yes, i have lasted. But for what?

Quotes by Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.

Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes, you are ready.

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.

It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea, and the old man had always considered it so and respected it.

Final Notes

Ernest Hemingway was a man with a turbulent life that left behind an impressive opus.

It is known among authors that many of them fail at becoming successful just because they try to write like Hemingway. Writing like him – so simply but at the same time so deeply is not something just anyone can do.

His talent still influences readers and writers of contemporary generations.