14 Hemingway Quotes For Your Weekend

You are told to use a weekend like a swimmer uses a breath of fresh air, but if your week was honest and true and utterly devoid of any kind of compromise, you are probably better off doing something else, like breathing that breath on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

1. “I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.”

2. “All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.”

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

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

5. “A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”

6. “This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it.”

7. “You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”

8. “Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.”

9. “Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

10. “Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.”

11. “Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”

12. “Death is like an old whore in a bar—I'll buy her a drink but I won't go upstairs with her.”

13. "Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor."

14. “Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”


Ethan Wolff-Mann is an editor at Supercompressor. He does not box. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.