Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises is an exploration of love and morality in the streets of Paris and Pamplona. It peers deeply into those things that provide man with meaning to his life and to relationships. The characters are not admirable, at times unlikable, yet the are very alluring. The reader is drawn to them like a moth to a flame – and, in getting to know Jake, Brett and Robert, we are left singed and anxious. With this story, Hemingway succeeded in giving us a remarkable account and unforgettable lesson.
Here is a dozen gems from The Sun Also Rises:
- I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.
- You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.
- I suppose she only wanted what she couldn’t have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people.
- It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.
- Everyone behaves badly–given the chance.
- This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.
- We should not question. Our stay on earth is not for long. Let us rejoice and believe and give thanks.
- You are all a lost generation.
- It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.
- Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship.
- Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.
- That was morality: thing that made you disgusted afterward.
The photo is from the 1957 movie starring Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner and Errol Flynn.
