“If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.”
Ernest Hemingway (verified)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Primary source)
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in 1940, is a powerful and introspective novel set during the Spanish Civil War. The story follows Robert Jordan, an American volunteer fighting with the anti-fascist Republican forces. As a dynamiter assigned to blow up a bridge critical to an upcoming Republican offensive, Jordan’s mission becomes a lens through which Hemingway explores themes of duty, sacrifice, love, death, and the complex nature of war.
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“There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any to-morrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.”
Ernest Hemingway (verified)
“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)“Every day above earth is a good day.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)More quotes by Ernest Hemingway →
“The years teach much which the days never know.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)“My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren’t with me I haven’t a thing in the world.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)“Necessity never made a good bargain.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)