“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”
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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“If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life. You’ve had just as good a life as grandfather’s though not as long. You’ve had as good a life as anyone because of these last days. You do not want to complain when you have been so lucky. I wish there was some way to pass on what I’ve learned, though.”
Ernest Hemingway
“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Every day above earth is a good day.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary sourceMore quotes by Ernest Hemingway →
“This is a good place,” he said.
“There’s a lot of liquor,” I agreed.
“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 Primary source“Never say ‘no’ to adventures.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“The only way to have real success in science, the field I’m familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good and what’s bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source