“How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all the other time. I’d like to be an old man and to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.”
Ernest Hemingway
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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“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary sourceMore 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 Primary source“Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“I may not be as strong as I think. But I know many tricks and I have resolution.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary sourceLearning Time Knowledge Wisdom Age