Lia > Lia's Quotes

“War is not won by victory.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”
― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

“And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.'

'What did you say?'

'I said we could have everything.'

'We can have everything.'

'No, we can't.'

'We can have the whole world.'

'No, we can't.'

'We can go everywhere.'

'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.'

'It's ours.'

'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“Do you feel better?' he asked.

'I feel fine,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.”
― SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?
Doesn't that make life a story?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“And you'll always love me won't you?
Yes
And the rain won't make any difference?
No”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“All things truly wicked start from innocence.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”
― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

“He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“You are what you believe yourself to be.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.”
― Paulo Coelho

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost

“How many things would you attempt
If you knew you could not fail”
― Robert Frost

“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once -somewhere- far away in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I’ve never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden