As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the joy found in simple pleasures and the transformative power of experiences.
In this passage, Hemingway describes the sensory experience of eating oysters and drinking wine, which evokes a deep appreciation for life's small delights. The act of savoring these flavors leads to a shift in his emotional state, moving from emptiness to happiness, illustrating how such moments can inspire new plans and a renewed sense of purpose.
In practice
During a toast at a wedding reception, one might quote this to remind everyone to appreciate the simple joys in life.
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.
But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.
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