Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal—a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, on the water for months without a catch, but refusing to stop trying.

Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the timeless theme of courage and commitment in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his talent and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Old Man and the Sea

Patricia Melova

Sanne

He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.

The punishment of the hook is nothing. The punishment of hunger, and that he is against something that he does not comprehend, is everything.

‘I’d like to buy some [luck] if there's any place they sell it,’ he said.

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“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Now is no time to think of what you do not have.

Think of what you can do with that there is

It's silly not to hope. It's a sin he thought.

I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.

“Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead.”

The Old Man and the Sea quotes

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