he following epitaph is inscribed on the tombstone of Ernest Hemingway: ’’Best of all he loved the fall…the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams, and above the hills the high blue windless skies…Now he will be a part of them forever.’’

Here are 30 of the wisest things ’’Papa’’ ever said (Hemingway didn’t like to be called by his first name, preferring ’’Papa’’ instead, as his sons and admirers from around the world called him).

1. Life should never daunt you. Never be daunted. It’s the secret of my success. I’ve never been daunted. Never been daunted in public.
2. Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.
3. Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
4. Any small act of kindness you can do in life is worth doing.
5. Don’t judge a man by his friends. Remember that the friends of Judah were impeccable.
6. By just looking at pictures without prejudice, and reading books with as open a mind as you have, you live life.
7. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
8. You can either buy clothes or buy paintings. It’s that simple. Someone who isn’t rich can’t do both. Pay no attention to fashion and buy your clothes for comfort and durability, and you will have the money to buy paintings.
9. The human being is the only animal which can laugh, even though he has the least number of reasons for doing so.
10. There are two types of people: those who are easy to be with but also easy to be without, and who are difficult to be with, but impossible to be without.
11. An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk and spend time with his stupidity.
12. If you allow yourself to make jokes, people don’t take you seriously. But these same people don’t understand that there is much in this life which one cannot endure without a sense of humour.
13. Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
14. Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
15. A man is not worth calling a man if he will not fight or see those that are dear to him suffer.
16. One man alone ain’t got, no matter how alone, ain’t got no bloody chance.
17. The essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, bullshit detector.
18. All good books are alike: they seem more true than life itself.
19. What things harm a writer? Politics, women, drinks, money, ambition. Also, a lack of politics, women, drinks, money, and ambition.
20. The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.
21. Write drunk, edit sober.
22. We’re stronger in the places where we’ve been broken.
23. Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
24. Remember, anybody who pulls his education on you hasn’t got any.
25. It’s better to not have an ideology than not to have work.
26. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it, you learned what it was all about.
27. There are things worse than war: cowardice, betrayal, selfishness.
28. Life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve got nothing to lose.
29. If we win here, we will win everywhere.
30. The world is a fine place worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

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