Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Ernest Becker

When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.

Authority | Good | Ideals | Ideas | Immortality | Life | Life | Little | Man | Means | People | Truth | Following |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

All the passengers were crowded over on the landside of the ship, watching through the narrow windows the careened hulk of a freighter, visibly damaged by shellfire, which had driven ashore to beach her cargo. She lay aground, looking against the sand in that clear water like a whale with smokestacks that had come to the beach to die.

Failure | Hope | Luck | Will | Writing | Luck | Failure |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

He was going to sleep a little while. He lay still and death was not there. It must have gone around another street. It went in pairs, on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the pavements.

Guilt | Knowledge | Right | Story | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

Day | Loneliness | Time |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water

Dignity | Enough | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the sun sets in September. He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars were out. He did not know the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his distant friends. 'The fish is my friend too,' he said aloud. 'I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.

Good | Little | Man | Men | People | Sound | Talking | Time | Waiting |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

Dignity | Enough | Will | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

She should have. All women should see it. It's a face that ought to be thrown on every screen in the country. Every woman ought to be given a copy of this face as she leaves the altar. Mothers should tell their daughters about this face.

Literature | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.

Art | Knowledge | Man | Time | Art |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you traveled too, and in the mountains where we lived in Switzerland and Italy, until we found Schruns in the high valley in the Vorarlberg in Austria, there were always the books, so that you lived in the new world you had found, the snow and the forests and the glaciers and their winter problems and your high shelter in the Hotel Taube in the village in the day time, and at night you could live in the other wonderful world the Russian writers were giving you.

Friend | Little | Time | Will | Friends |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

To be a successful father there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

Harm | Talking | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I was blown up while we were eating cheese.

Danger | Disease | Fear | Man | Men | Stupidity | Time | Danger | Afraid | Vice |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

So far, 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 and judged by these standards, which I do not defend, the bullfight is very normal to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality, and after it is over I feel very sad but also very fine.

Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.

Ability | Day | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | People | Thinking | Truth | Will | Work | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

ItÂ’s his sense of self-preservation. The great Italian sense. The greatest Italian sense.

Accident | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

Time | Will |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.

Better | Day | Nothing | Progress | Sorrow | Will | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

Enough | People | Time | Will | Writing |