100+ Powerful Ernest Hemingway Quotes That Inspire Writers & Thinkers

"Courage is grace under pressure."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

"Fear is what we must conquer every day."

"Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now."

"Everyone has talent, but ability takes hard work."

"The first draft of anything is shit."

"We are all broken; that’s how the light gets in."

"In order to write about life first you must live it."

"Never mistake movement for action."

"Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

"The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too."

"Love is a serious mental disease."

"When you stop doing things for fun, you may as well be dead."

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."

"You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."

"The hardest part about loving someone is truly letting them go."

"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it."

"Every man is afraid of something. The bravest are not those who feel no fear, but those who conquer it."

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

"All things truly wicked start from innocence."

"The only time I feel alive is when I’m writing."

"Writing is easier than living. It’s always easier to write about it."

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."

"War is bad for everyone, especially those who survive it."

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

"Nobody ever wins at war. There isn't even any such thing as winning."

"Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

"In modern war, there is nothing won. Even the winners lose."

"War is not won by victory. What ends war is exhaustion."

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin."

"Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry."

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."

"The cheapest kind of courage is to die for a cause. The real courage is to live for one."

"Peace is something that you make, something that you do, something that you are, and something that you give away."

"Write the truest sentence you know."

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration."

"The writer's job is to tell the truth."

"A man should have known better than to write about love unless he had experienced it."

"The purpose of writing is to convey ideas clearly and honestly."

"Write hard and clear about what hurts."

"Success in writing is not measured by fame, but by honesty."

"The best writing is rewriting."

"Develop a habit of writing every day. Discipline beats inspiration."

"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard."

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the one true sentence you know."

"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for."

"All thinking men are atheists."

"Each day is a new life to a wise man."

"Life breaks us all, but later, many are strong at the broken places."

"The shortest answer is doing."

"Every day above ground is a good day."

"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I believe that."

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

"Don't let anyone tell you what you can't do. People can't do it themselves, they want to tell you you can't do it."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

"Most people would rather die than think. In fact, they do."

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

"The truth is that the world is not what we want it to be."

"The truth is brutal."

"All stories are made up, but some are true."

"If a writer stops observing, he is finished."

"Fiction is lies, but it should be true."

"There is no greater loyalty than the truth."

"The best people are honest even when no one is watching."

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

"Integrity is everything in writing."

"The best lies are mixed with truth."

"Speak the truth even if your voice shakes."

"To be a great writer, you must be a great liar—about facts, but never about emotion."

"Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends."

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."

"We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us."

"The earth is a fine place and worth saving."

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."

"I travel because I have to, because it makes me feel alive."

"The world is wide enough for all of us to explore."

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself."

"The sea is the same as it has been since before men were, or when they could write."

"No one can discover the world who hasn’t discovered their own soul."

"To live outside the law, you must be honest."

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

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

"A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

"Pressure does not crack me; it reveals me."

"Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope."

"Every day is a new day. It is better than the last day or worse."

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

"It is easy to kill a man who is already dead inside."

"The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well."

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice."

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

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

"When you’re lost, you find strength you didn’t know you had."

"The sun also rises."

"The trees were large and the forest was dark and quiet."

"I love the sea and fish and the smell of salt and wind."

"Solitude is essential for writing and for thought."

"The mountains looked strange in the snow."

"The river was clear and cold and flowed swiftly."

"He was alone in the world and he liked it that way."

"Nature does not care what we think."

"The earth moves, but the sky remains."

"Silence is the language of nature."

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep."

"Solitude gives clarity. Clarity gives strength."

"The dead are safer than the living in war."

"What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."

"In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take."

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

"The only immortality we humans achieve is through our work."

"A writer’s life ends when he stops writing."

"Books die, authors die, but words live forever."

"Legacy is not what you leave behind, but what you inspire."

"Greatness is not remembered by titles, but by impact."

"The only way to live forever is to make others believe in what you believed."

"Memory is stronger than death."

"A man’s work is his monument."