A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

The title of the book is A Farewell to Arms and except for three years there has been war of some kind almost ever since it has been written.

But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates this war.” “There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war.”

“You understand but you do not love God.” “No.” “You do not love Him at all?” he asked. “I am afraid of Him in the night sometimes.”

When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”

“Then nothing worries you?” “Only being sent away from you. You’re my religion. You’re all I’ve got.”

“Don’t talk as though you had to make an honest woman of me, darling. I’m a very honest woman. You can’t be ashamed of something if you’re only happy and proud of it.

“Because you’re too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave.” “They die of course.” “But only once.” “I don’t know. Who said that?” “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?” “Of course. Who said it?” “I don’t know.” “He was probably a coward,” she said. “He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.”

“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

You could not go back. If you did not go forward what happened?

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

“You never seem old.” “It is the body that is old. Sometimes I am afraid I will break off a finger as one breaks a stick of chalk. And the spirit is no older and not much wiser.” “You are wise.” “No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”

What do you value most?” “Some one I love.” “With me it is the same. That is not wisdom. Do you value life?” “Yes.” “So do I. Because it is all I have.

“Hell,” I said, “I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?” “Yes. I want to ruin you.” “Good,” I said, “that’s what I want too.”

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

The only thing I know is that if you love anything enough they take it away from you. This may all be done in infinite wisdom but whoever does it is not my friend. I am afraid of God at night but I would have admired him more if he would have stopped the war or never have let it start.

After people die you have to bury them but you do not have to write about it. You do not have to write about an undertaker nor all the business of burial. You do not have to write about that day nor the next night of the day after and the night after, and the progress from numbness into sorrow nor all the days after and all the nights after for a long time. In writing you have a certain choice that you do not have in life.