“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 (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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“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 →
“Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
— Marie Curie (unverified)“I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”
— Richard Feynman (verified)“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)