Ernest Hemingway's Birthday

Ernest Hemingway was born this day in 1899. I thought a few quotes from this great American writer would be a good way to celebrate and remember him.

"But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

"As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary."

"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."

"In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating, and to me as necessary."

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

"The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without."

"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."

"All things truly wicked start from innocence."

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."

"No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one."

Some interesting thoughts on a wide range of subjects, hopefully, if you have never read Hemingway, this will inspire you to try. A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and For whom the Bell Tolls are good starting places.

Find Hemingway's Books

Independence Day

In honor of July 4, Independence Day here in the USA, I thought I would share some of my favorite success quotes:


"Seventy percent of success in life is showing up." Woody Allen

"Self-trust is the first secret of success." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed." Henry Ford

"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings." William Blake

"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Thoreau


"The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore."
–Dale Carnegie


"...Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person."

Og Mandino

Put Her Down!

This is another story I first encountered in a collection of Zen teaching stories. It takes place in Japan, many, many years ago.

Two monks are walking down the road of a small village.

The road is unpaved, and muddy. They pass a courtesan standing on the side of the street, dressed in a fine silk kimono. She is looking for a way to cross the road without getting muddy. She seems very distressed, as there is no way to cross the road without going through the mud.

The elder of the two monks, seeing her distress, picks her up and carries her across the road, and sets her down on the opposite side.

The monks continue walking through the village and beyond.

Eventually, the younger of the two monks, turns to the other monk and says, "How could you do that? We are monks, we are supposed to keep ourselves pure. We should not even associate with women like that. But you picked her up and carried her."

The older monk looks at the younger monk, and says, "I put her down back at the corner. You are still carrying her."