There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
Interpretation
Hemingway emphasizes that true sports require immense courage and skill, distinguishing them from simpler games.
In this quote, Ernest Hemingway categorizes bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering as the only authentic sports, implying they embody the ultimate test of human skill, bravery, and endurance. He suggests that these activities are the pinnacle of sporting challenges, while other pastimes are mere amusements without the same level of risk or intensity. Hemingway's perspective elevates these three pursuits, celebrating the passion, danger, and artistry involved in their execution.
In practice
During a motivational speech about taking risks, one might quote Hemingway's perspective on sports.
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.
Magic has universal appeal. I don't believe in magic in the way that I describe in my books, but I'd love it to be real.
Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.
I've loved the opportunity to learn about the fashion world and appreciate it as an art form, and I look forward to my continued education, but I never want it to take over my acting.
Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, the ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm, big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.
By and large, most of the work that we see in the great museums throughout the world are populated with people who don't happen to look like me.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.