words to inspire before you expire
“I myself did not want to sleep because I had been living for a long time with the knowledge that if I ever shut my eyes in the dark and let myself go, my soul would go out of my body. I had been that way for a long time, ever since I had been blown up at night and felt it go out of me and go off and then come back.”
—from “Now I Lay Me” by Ernest Hemingway
“‘Americans make the best husbands,’ the American lady said to my wife. I was getting down the bags. ‘American men are the only men in the world to marry.'”
—from “A Canary For One” by Ernest Hemingway
“After a while he heard his father blow out the lamp and go into his own room. He heard a wind come up in the trees outside and felt it come in cool through the screen. He lay for a long time with his face in the pillow, and after a while he forgot to think about Prudence and finally he went to sleep. When he awoke in the night he heard the wind in the hemlock tree outside the cottage and the waves of the lake coming in on the shore, and he went back to sleep. In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.”
—from “Ten Indians” by Ernest Hemingway
“Jack poured one for me and another big one for himself.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I missed a lot, boxing.’
‘You made plenty of money.’
‘Sure, that’s what I’m after. You know I miss a lot, Jerry.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘like about the wife. And being away from home so much. It don’t do my girls any good. “Who’s your old man?” some of those society kids’ll say to them. “My old man’s Jack Brennan.” That don’t do them any good.’
‘Hell,” I said, ‘all that makes a difference is if they got dough.’
‘Well,’ says Jack, ‘I got the dough for them all right.’
He poured out another drink. The bottle was about empty.
—from “Fifty Grand” by Ernest Hemingway
“‘I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.’
‘Well,’ said George, ‘you better not think about it.'”
— from “The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway
“Zurito watched. The monos, in their red shirts, running out to drag the picador clear. The picador, now on his feet, swearing and flopping his arms. Manuel and Hernandez standing ready with their capes. And the bull, the great black bull, with a horse on his back, hooves dangling, the bridle caught in the horns. Black bull with a horse on his back, staggering short-legged, then arching his neck and lifting, thrusting, charging to slide the horse off, horse sliding down. Then the bull into a lunging charge at the cape Manuel spread for him.”
—from “The Undefeated” by Ernest Hemingway
“‘A knight I am, and a knight I will die, if it be heaven’s goodwill. Some pass through the spacious field of proud ambition; others through that of servile and base flattery; others by the way of deceitful hypocrisy; and some by that of true religion: but I, by the influence of my star, take the narrow path of knight-errantry, for the exercise whereof I despise wealth, but not honour. I have redressed grievances, righted wrongs, chastised insolences, vanquished giants, and trampled upon hobgoblins: I am in love, but only because knights-errant must be so; and, being so, I am no vicious lover, but a chaste Platonic one. My intentions are always directed to virtuous ends, to do good to all, and to hurt none. Whether he, who means thus, acts thus, and lives in the practice of all this, deserves to be called a fool, let your grandeurs judge, most excellent duke and duchess.'”
—from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
” . . . two such fools, as master and man, were never before seen in the world.”
—from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
“‘ . . . there is nothing in the world so pleasant to an honest man, as to be squire to a knight-errant, and seeker of adventures . . . it is a fine thing to be in expectation of accidents, traversing mountains, searching woods, marching over rocks, visiting castles, lodging in inns, all at discretion, and the devil a farthing to pay.'”
—from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
“‘And though this be a poetical fiction, there is concealed moral in it, worthy to be observed, understood, and imitated.'”
—from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
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