“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) lived life larger than life. As a writer he has few peers. He had that incredible ability to put a whole lot of life into very few words. Hemingway provides today’s Saturday Life Quotes. Drawn from a Mental Floss article, here is Ernest Hemingway’s Guide to Life in 20 Quotes:

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

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

ON TRUST

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

ON DECIDING WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT

“I never had to choose a subject—my subject rather chose me.”

ON TRAVEL

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND HAPPINESS

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

ON TRUTH

“There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.”

ON THE DOWNSIDE OF PEOPLE

“The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness, except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

ON SUFFERING FOR YOUR ART

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

ON TAKING ACTION

“Never mistake motion for action.”

ON GETTING WORDS OUT

“I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast—talk them or write them down.”

ON THE BENEFITS OF SLEEP

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”

ON FINDING STRENGTH

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

ON THE TRUE NATURE OF WICKEDNESS

“All things truly wicked start from innocence.”

ON WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW

“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.”

ON THE DEFINITION OF COURAGE

“Courage is grace under pressure.”

ON THE PAINFULNESS OF BEING FUNNY

“A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.”

ON KEEPING PROMISES

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”

ON GOOD VS. EVIL

“About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”

ON REACHING FOR THE UNATTAINABLE

“For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”

ON HAPPY ENDINGS

“There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”