A Farewell to Arms (Primary source)
A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929, is Ernest Hemingway’s semi-autobiographical novel set during World War I. It tells the poignant story of an American ambulance driver, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, serving in the Italian army, and his doomed love affair with a British nurse, Catherine Barkley. The novel explores themes of love and loss, the brutality and futility of war, and the struggle to find meaning in a chaotic, indifferent world.
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“Napoleon would have whipped the Austrians on the plains. He never would have fought them in the mountains. He would have let them come down and whipped them around Verona. Still nobody was whipping any one on the Western front. Perhaps wars weren’t won any more. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War.”
Ernest Hemingway
“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 →
“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”
— William Blake Primary source“You never kill any one that you want to kill in a war.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.”
— Thomas Jefferson Primary source“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source