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.
Many great works of art, poetry, and music are inspired by astral memories. The desire to do noble, beautiful things here on Earth is also often a carryover of astral experiences between a person's earth lives.
Making movies is not rocket science. It's about relationships and communication and strangers coming together to see if they can get along harmoniously, productively, and creatively. That's a challenge. When it works, it's fantastic and will lift you up. When it doesn't work, it's almost just as fascinating.
I've made movies that I thought were good. I've made movies that I thought were okay, but then I was very good. And sometimes you're in a movie and you think, I wish more people saw that - because you're good. And it just works out that the movie gets lost. But that's show business.
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
My main point about films is that I don't like the adaptation process, and I particularly don't like the modern way of comic book-film adaptations, where, essentially, the central characters are just franchises that can be worked endlessly to no apparent point.
I gave my hero a talent I'd love to have. Who wouldn't want to fly?
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