The Old Man and the Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

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.

I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?

But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.

With his prayers said, and feeling much better, but suffering exactly as much, and perhaps a little more, he leaned against the wood of the bow and began, mechanically, to work the fingers of his left hand.

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.

Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts.

"It is not bad," he said. "And pain does not matter to a man."

I'll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I cannot say them now." Consider them said, he thought. I'll say them later.

You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

He tried to settle more comfortably to steer and from his pain he knew he was not dead.