'Death in the Afternoon' Quotes

In Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway explores the traditions and history of Spanish bullfighting, which he also included in his novel, The Sun Also Rises. Here, Hemingway offers a work of nonfiction, examining the passion, intensity and ceremony of bullfighting. Here are a few quotes from the travel book.

• "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 1.
  
  
• "All our words from loose using have lost their edge."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 7.
  
  
• "Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 7.
  
  
• "Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 9.
  
  
• "Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 9.
  
  
• "The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 10.
  
  
• "There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 11.
  
  
• "Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 11.
  
  
• "Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 11.
  
  
• "There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 11.
  
  
• "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 16.
  
  
• "A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 16.
  
  
• "When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature."
  - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 16.