“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)
Notes on the Next War (Primary source)
In Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter, published in Esquire in 1935, Ernest Hemingway offers a dark, reflective, and ironically humorous meditation on the looming threat of another global conflict—what would eventually become World War II. Writing between the two world wars, Hemingway draws on his own harrowing experiences in World War I to critique the glorification of war and to expose its brutal psychological and physical costs.
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“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 →
“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)“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)“This is a good place,” he said.
“There’s a lot of liquor,” I agreed.
“No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it’s not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)