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 Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things

Men | War | Will | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.

Choice | Man | People | Strength | Old |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

Man | People | Story | Old | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.

Earth | Little | Man | Men |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

People |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Oh Daddy, canÂ’t you give her something to make her stop screaming? asked Nick. No. I havenÂ’t any anesthetic, his father said. But her screams are not important. I donÂ’t hear them because they are not important.

Men | Practice |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenance.

Day | Man | Position | Power | Time | War | Will | Crisis |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.

Day | Light | Love | Means | Nothing | Story | Time | Will | Work |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

Past | Thought | Time | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

Heart | Time |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

Waiting |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Men | Time |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

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.

Chance | Enough | Knowing | Thinking | Time | World | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.

People | Price |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

Happy | Love | People |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Maera lay still, his head on his arms, his face in the sand. He felt warm and sticky from the bleeding. Each time he felt the horn coming. Sometimes the bull only bumped him with his head. Once the horn went all the way through him and he felt it go into the sand. Some one had the bull by the tail. They were swearing at him and flopping the cape in his face. Then the bull was gone. Some men picked Maera up and started to run with him toward the barriers through the gate out the passageway around under the grandstand to the infirmary. They laid Maera down on the cot and one of the men went out for the doctor. The others stood around. The doctor came running from the coral where he had been sewing up picador horses. He had to stop and wash his hands. There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand overhead. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was dead.

Meaning | People | Old |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.

Care | Enough | Men |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Well, I know what I have to do, so it is simple. Duty is a wonderful thing. I do not know what I should have done without duty since young Tom died. You could have painted, he told himself. Or you could have done something useful. Maybe, he thought. Duty is simpler.

Bible | Good | Men | Title | Bible | Old |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

When the winter began, the rain became permanent, and the rain came the cholera. But it was dominated, and only killed seven thousand men of the army.

Day | Good | People | Problems | Happiness |