"When you stop doing things for fun you might as well be dead."

Ernest Hemingway Literature See all quotes by Ernest Hemingway →

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More by Ernest Hemingway

“I've been in love (truly) with five women, the Spanish Republic and the 4th Infantry Division.”

“I know monks masturbate at night That pet cats screw That some girls bite And yet What can I do To set things right?”

“Grace under pressure.”

“I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably be an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.”

“The age demanded that we danceAnd jammed us into iron pants.And in the end the age was handedThe sort of shit that it demanded.”

“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The whole point of the military-first policy was not so much to whip up support for the military as to de-ideologize the economic sector, to make it possible to dismantle the command economy without d…"

— Brian Reynolds Myers

Education1963

#power

"I'm afraid of habit patterns...It would be too much of a routine if you had to establish definite ways of getting through things. You'd get very bored."

— Edie Sedgwick

Entertainment1943–1971

#fear

"It’s all right to need help. All of us have things we can’t do alone."

— N. K. Jemisin

Literature1972

#kindness

"Of all things to be learned, in school or out, languaging, as I prefer to call the process, is least like a mechanical skill. It is, in fact, the most intimate, integrated, emotion-laden learning we d…"

— Neil Postman

Literature1931–2003

#knowledge