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For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
30 popular highlights from this book
Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from For Whom the Bell Tolls:
He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.
I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains.
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.
There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.
There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.
But did thee feel the earth move?
There's no one thing that's true. It's all true.
There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.
I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.
The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
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 other time. I'd like to be an old man 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 so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.
I had an inheritance from my father,It was the moon and the sun.And though I roam all over the world,The spending of it’s never done.
This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it
For what are we born if not to aid one another?
No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.
Are you a communist?""No I am an anti-fascist""For a long time?""Since I have understood fascism.
And another thing. Don’t ever kid yourself about loving some one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.
For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.
I love thee and thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be with thee that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving thee.
Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.
Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.
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 any 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.
But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), ...
You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.
I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other.
Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.
Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practice in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in this own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol.
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.
The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.