Quote Something Literary

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  • Khurram0

    Old Man and the Sea, from the Hemingway the writer:

    You bought me a beer,” the old man said [to the boy]. “You are already a man.”

    The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, “I am sorry.” “Qua Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man must do.”

    Now alone, and out of sight of land, he was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.

    He jumped almost as though to show me how big he was. I know now, anyway, he thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.

    “I’ll kill him though,” he said. “In all his greatness and his glory.” Although it is unjust, he thought. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.

    Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea. “Unless sharks come,” he said aloud. “If sharks come, God pity him and me.”

    After he judged that his right hand had been in the water long enough he took it out and looked at it. “It is not bad,” he said. “And pain does not matter to a man.”

    Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man.

    “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

    He spat into the ocean and said, “Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.

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