A Farewell to Arms quotes

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.

The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare. There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery.

In the dark it was like summer lightning, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming.

Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motor-tractors.

He lived in Udine and came out in this way nearly every day to see how things were going, and things went very badly.

At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.

“

You talk like a timetable.

Did you have any beautiful adventures?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “

There isn’t always an explanation for everything.

”

“Arrivederla.” I saluted and went out. It was impossible to salute foreigners as an Italian, without embarrassment.

The Italian salute never seemed made for export.

The day had been hot. I had been up the river to the bridgehead at Plava. It was there that the offensive was to begin.

“

It’s very hard. There’s no place to drop it.

”

The frescoes were not bad.

Any frescoes were good when they started to peel and flake off.

I saw Catherine Barkley coming down the hall, and stood up. She did not seem tall walking toward me but she looked very lovely.

“It’s not been away.” I turned her so I could see her face when I kissed her and I saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes.

I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was.

I did not care what I was getting into.

I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her.

This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards.

Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

That should handle them. Those postcards would be very fine in America; strange and mysterious. This was a strange and mysterious war zone but I supposed it was quite well run and grim compared to other wars with the Austrians.

The Austrian army was created to give Napoleon victories; any Napoleon.

I wished we had a Napoleon, but instead we had Il Generale Cadorna, fat and prosperous, and Vittorio Emmanuele, the tiny man with the long thin neck and the goat beard. Over on the right they had the Duke of Aosta.

Yes, father. That is true, father. Perhaps, father. No, father. Well, maybe yes, father. You know more about it than I do, father. The priest was good but dull. The officers were not good but dull. The King was good but dull.

The wine was bad but not dull. It took the enamel off your teeth and left it on the roof of your mouth.

“And the priest was locked up,” Rocca said, “because they found the three percent bonds on his person. It was in France of course. Here they would never have arrested him. He denied all knowledge of the five percent bonds. This took place at Béziers.

“It could not be worse,” Passini said respectfully. “

There is nothing worse than war.

”

I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind.

I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died.

Then I floated, and instead of going on I felt myself slide back. I breathed and I was back. The ground was torn up and in front of my head there was a splintered beam of wood.

They carried wounded in and brought them out. I could see the light come out from the dressing station when the curtain opened and they brought someone in or out. The dead were off to one side.

The doctors were working with their sleeves up to their shoulders and were red as butchers.

There were not enough stretchers. Some of the wounded were noisy but most were quiet. The wind blew the leaves in the bower over the door of the dressing station and the night was getting cold.

“He’s dead I think,” I said.

The drops fell very slowly, as they fall from an icicle after the sun has gone.

It was cold in the car in the night as the road climbed. At the post on the top they took the stretcher out and put another in and we went on.

“No,” I said. “

I was blown up while we were eating cheese.

”

“There are no girls. For two weeks now they haven’t changed them. I don’t go there any more. It is disgraceful.

They aren’t girls; they are old war comrades.

”

“

It is never hopeless. But sometimes I cannot hope.

I try always to hope but sometimes I cannot.”

She went out.

God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with anyone.

But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful and finally Miss Gage came in.

Before he came back three doctors came into the room.

I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another’s company and aid in consultation.

A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend to you a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success. These were three such doctors.

“Oh no.

You have the lovely temperature. I’m awfully proud of your temperature.

”

“

Our children will probably have beastly temperatures.

”

“You’ll die then.

Fight or die. That’s what people do. They don’t marry.

”

Catherine Barkley took three nights off night duty and then she came back on again.

It was as though we met again after each of us had been away on a long journey.

“

There isn’t any me. I’m you. Don’t make up a separate me.

”

“Only being sent away from you.

You’re my religion. You’re all I’ve got.

”

“Don’t talk as though you had to make an honest woman of me, darling.

I’m a very honest woman. You can’t be ashamed of something if you’re only happy and proud of it.

Aren’t you happy?”

Napoleon would have whipped the Austrians on the plains. He never would have fought them in the mountains. He would have let them come down and whipped them around Verona. Still nobody was whipping anyone on the Western front.

Perhaps wars weren’t won any more. Maybe they went on forever.

Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War. I put the paper back on the rack and left the club. I went down the steps carefully and walked up the Via Manzoni.

He had a sister, who had been sent to America with him at the same time to live with the uncle, who would graduate from normal school this year.

He was a legitimate hero who bored everyone he met.

Catherine could not stand him.

“You have a splendid rank. I don’t want you to have any more rank. It might go to your head. Oh, darling, I’m awfully glad you’re not conceited.

I’d have married you even if you were conceited but it’s very restful to have a husband who’s not conceited.

”

“All right.

I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it.

”

He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it.

The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.

We had another drink. Was I on somebody’s staff? No. He was. It was all balls. We were alone in the club sitting back in one of the big leather sofas. His boots were smoothly polished dull leather. They were beautiful boots.

But they probably wouldn’t do that, he said. It was too simple. They’d try something complicated and get royally cooked. I had to go, I said. I had to get back to the hospital. “Goodbye,” he said. Then cheerily, “Every sort of luck!”

There was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness.

I stopped at a barber shop and was shaved and went home to the hospital. My leg was as well as it would get for a long time. I had been up for examination three days before.

“No I’m not.

But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.

”

“

‘Always’ isn’t a pretty word.

”

“We mustn’t.

Because there’s only us two and in the world there’s all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we’re gone and then they have us.

”

“He was probably a coward,” she said. “He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave.

The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.

”

“That was very big,” she said. “

I know brandy is for heroes. But you shouldn’t exaggerate.

”

“And I was pitying you having jaundice.

Pity is something that is wasted on you.

”

She went down the hall. The porter carried the sack. He knew what was in it.

Nothing happened except that I lost my leave.

“I don’t know.

Everybody ought to have some place to go.

”

“I was a little crazy. But I wasn’t crazy in any complicated manner. I didn’t confuse you did I, darling?”

“Wine is a grand thing,” I said. “It makes you forget all the bad.”

“It’s lovely,” said Catherine. “But it’s given my father gout very badly.”

I suppose that had happened; even with his friends.

One had so many friends in a war.

I asked the waiter to get us a carriage and he took Catherine’s package that I was carrying and went out with an umbrella. Outside through the window we saw him crossing the street in the rain.

“All summer and all fall I’ve operated. I work all the time. I do everybody’s work. All the hard ones they leave to me. By God, baby, I am becoming a lovely surgeon.”

“I never think. No, by God, I don’t think; I operate.”

“But now, baby, it’s all over. I don’t operate now and I feel like hell. This is a terrible war, baby. You believe me when I say it. Now you cheer me up. Did you bring the phonograph records?”

“No. I have my own too. I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots.

Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.

” He came over to the bed. “Kiss me once and tell me you’re not serious.”

“Rinin,” I said. “Please shut up. If you want to be my friend, shut up.”

“I don’t want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend.”

I went over to the bed and sat down beside Rinaldi. He was holding his glass and looking at the floor.

“I haven’t,” Rinaldi said. “Not if they love each other.”

“I am the snake. I am the snake of reason.”

“You’re getting it mixed. The apple was reason.”

“No. We never get anything.

We are born with all we have and we never learn. We never get anything new.

We all start complete. You should be glad not to be a Latin.”

“Not for an empty stomach. It is a wonderful thing. It burns out the stomach completely. Nothing is worse for you.”

“Self-destruction day by day,” Rinaldi said. “It ruins the stomach and makes the hand shake. Just the thing for a surgeon.”

“Heartily. I use no other. Drink it down, baby, and look forward to being sick.”

“If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same thing.”

“No one ever stopped when they were winning.”

“I can only say what I think.”

“I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory.

It is in defeat that we become Christian.

”

“They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army.

That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.

”

I had expected it to be flatter, more like a plateau. I had not realized it was so broken up.

“Alto piano,” Gino said, “but no piano.”

We went back to the cellar of the house where he lived. I said I thought a ridge that flattened out on top and had a little depth would be easier and more practical to hold than a succession of small mountains.

“A terrible place,” said Gino. “Have you ever been there?”

“I am a patriot,” Gino said. “But I cannot love Brindisi or Taranto.”

“Do you love the Bainsizza?” I asked.

I did not say anything.

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain.

We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen …

Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

Gino was a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was also a fine boy and I understood his being a patriot. He was born one. He left with Peduzzi in the car to go back to Gorizia.

“You see,” Piani said. “That is brains. Why haven’t you brains, anarchist?”

“If I had brains I wouldn’t be here,” Bonello said.

“That’s pretty good, Tenente,” Aymo said.

The barn was gone now and one year they had cut the hemlock woods and there were only stumps, dried treetops, branches and fireweed where the woods had been.

You could not go back. If you did not go forward what happened?

You never got back to Milan. And if you got back to Milan what happened? I listened to the firing to the north toward Udine. I could hear machine-gun firing. There was no shelling. That was something.

“If the war is over it makes no difference,” Piani said. “

But I don’t believe it’s over. It’s too good that it should be over.

”

“Why don’t you ask me to step over instead of having one of these airplanes grab me?”

They did not answer. They did not have to answer. They were battle police.

“Take him back there with the others,” the first officer said. “You see. He speaks Italian with an accent.”

They were wide-hatted carabinieri. The two who had me shoved me in with the group waiting to be questioned. I looked at the man the officers were questioning. He was the fat gray-haired little lieutenant-colonel they had taken out of the column.

The questioners had all the efficiency, coldness and command of themselves of Italians who are firing and are not being fired on.

He told them.

We stood there in the rain and listened to this. We were facing the officers and the prisoner stood in front and a little to one side of us.

“If you are going to shoot me,” the lieutenant-colonel said, “please shoot me at once without further questioning. The questioning is stupid.”

He made the sign of the cross. The officers spoke together. One wrote something on a pad of paper.

Some of the carabinieri had them. The other carabinieri wore the wide hat. Airplanes we called them. We stood in the rain and were taken out one at a time to be questioned and shot. So far they had shot everyone they had questioned.

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

They were questioning a full colonel of a line regiment. Three more officers had just been put in with us.

you seeing now very clearly and coldly—not so coldly as clearly and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another came forward.

You had lost your cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in a fire. There was, however, no insurance.

You were out of it now. You had no more obligation.

They might seek other employment; if there was any other employment and the police did not get them.

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

Although that ceased when the carabiniere put his hands on my collar. I would like to have had the uniform off although I did not care much about the outward forms. I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience.

That life was over. I did not think he had syphilis. It was not a serious disease anyway if you took it in time, they said. But he would worry. I would worry too if I had it. Anyone would worry.

I was not made to think. I was made to eat.

My God, yes. Eat and drink and sleep with Catherine. Tonight maybe. No that was impossible. But tomorrow night, and a good meal and sheets and never going away again except together. Probably have to go damned quickly. She would go.

In the old days I would have insulted them and picked a fight. They got off at Gallarate and I was glad to be alone. I had the paper but I did not read it because I did not want to read about the war.

I was going to forget the war. I had made a separate peace.

I felt damned lonely and was glad when the train got to Stresa.

“Don’t talk about the war,” I said. The war was a long way away. Maybe there wasn’t any war. There was no war here. Then I realized it was over for me. But I did not have the feeling that it was really over.

I had the feeling of a boy who thinks of what is happening at a certain hour at the schoolhouse from which he has played truant.

Catherine and Helen Ferguson were at supper when I came to their hotel. Standing in the hallway I saw them at table. Catherine’s face was away from me and I saw the line of her hair and her cheek and her lovely neck and shoulders.

“I can’t stand him,” Ferguson said. “He’s done nothing but ruin you with his sneaking Italian tricks. Americans are worse than Italians.”

“The Scotch are such a moral people,” Catherine said.

“I don’t mean that. I mean his Italian sneakiness.”

But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

I remember waking in the morning. Catherine was asleep and the sunlight was coming in through the window. The rain had stopped and I stepped out of bed and across the floor to the window.

Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that.

We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others.

It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way that you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

“I’m sorry, darling. I know it must be a dreadful feeling to have nothing at all suddenly.”

“My life used to be full of everything,” I said. “Now if you aren’t with me I haven’t a thing in the world.”

“But I’ll be with you. I was only gone for two hours. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“That’s the way I worked it at the front. But there was something to do then.”

“Othello with his occupation gone,” she teased.

“Othello was a nigger,” I said. “Besides, I’m not jealous. I’m just so in love with you that there isn’t anything else.”

“Would you like to live after death?” I asked and instantly felt a fool to mention death. But he did not mind the word.

“It would depend on the life. This life is very pleasant. I would like to live forever,” he smiled. “I very nearly have.”

We were sitting in the deep leather chairs, the champagne in the ice-bucket and our glasses on the table between us.

“It is the body that is old. Sometimes I am afraid I will break off a finger as one breaks a stick of chalk. And the spirit is no older and not much wiser.”

“No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”

“It is a very unattractive wisdom. What do you value most?”

“You said you were not wise.”

“Dear boy, that is not wisdom. That is cynicism.”

“It sounds very wise to me.”

“My own comes only at night.”

“Then too you are in love. Do not forget that is a religious feeling.”

“Of course.” He took a step toward the table. “You were very kind to play.”

“I’m glad to help you just so I don’t get in trouble myself. Listen,” he said to me. “I’ll take these out the servants’ stairs and to the boat. You just go out as though you were going for a walk.”

“It’s a lovely night for a walk,” Catherine said.

“It’s a bad night all right.”

“Good luck. We thank you many times.”

“You won’t thank me if you get drowned.”

“What does he say?” Catherine asked.

“Look at the houses. Isn’t this a fine square? There’s a place we can get breakfast.”

“Isn’t the rain fine? They never had rain like this in Italy. It’s cheerful rain.”

“And we’re here, darling! Do you realize we’re here?”

I reached down and stroked her. Catherine smiled at me very happily. “Here comes the coffee,” she said.

They arrested us after breakfast.

We took a little walk through the village then went down to the quay to get our bags. A soldier was standing guard over the boat.

“Don’t ask hard ones,” Catherine said. “I know him though—very bitter.”

“Very bitter,” I said. “Lots of nail holes.”

“You see I’ll make you a fine wife,” Catherine said. “I’ll be able to talk art with your customers.”

… woke in the night I knew it was from only one cause and I would shift the feather bed over, very softly so that Catherine would not be wakened and then go back to sleep again, warm and with the new lightness of thin covers.

The war seemed as far away as the football games of someone else’s college.

But I knew from the papers that they were still fighting in the mountains because the snow would not come.

“It might be nice short. Then we’d both be alike.

Oh, darling, I want you so much I want to be you too.

”

“I want us to be all mixed up. I don’t want you to go away. I just said that. You go if you want to. But hurry right back.

Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.

”

They called it glühwein and it was a good thing to warm you and to celebrate with.

The inn was dark and smoky inside and afterward when you went out the cold air came sharply into your lungs and numbed the edge of your nose as you inhaled.

We looked back at the inn with light coming from the windows and the woodcutters’ horses stamping and jerking their heads outside to keep warm. There was frost on the hairs of their muzzles and their breathing made plumes of frost in the air.

We looked back at the inn with light coming from the windows and the woodcutters’ horses stamping and jerking their heads outside to keep warm.

There was frost on the hairs of their muzzles and their breathing made plumes of frost in the air.

Going up the road toward home the road was smooth and slippery for a while and the ice orange from the horses until the wood-hauling track turned off.

Then the road was clean-packed snow and led through the woods, and twice coming home in the evening, we saw foxes.

It was a fine country and every time that we went out it was fun.

“You have a splendid beard now,” Catherine said. “It looks just like the woodcutters’. Did you see the man with the tiny gold earrings?”

“

We live in a country where nothing makes any difference.

Isn’t it grand how we never see anyone? You don’t want to see people do you, darling?”

“No. Only the sight draft.”

“Thank God I’m not your family.”

“I’ll send them a cable.”

“Don’t you care anything about them?”

“I did, but we quarrelled so much it wore itself out.”

“I think I’d like them. I’d probably like them very much.”

“I love your beard,” Catherine said. “It’s a great success.

It looks so stiff and fierce and it’s very soft and a great pleasure.

”

“Oh, you’re so sweet. And maybe I’d look lovely, darling, and be so thin and exciting to you and you’ll fall in love with me all over again.”

“Hell,” I said, “I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?”

“Yes. I want to ruin you.”

“Hell,” I said, “I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?”

“Yes. I want to ruin you.”

“Good,” I said, “that’s what I want too.”

“Yes. I want to ruin you.”

“Good,” I said, “that’s what I want too.”

“Hang out the Allied flags.”

“You say it so cautiously,” I said. “As though you didn’t want to offend anyone.”

“Then come over to the bed.”

That way you could tell how much whiskey there was and it would not suddenly be too thin from the soda. I would get a bottle of whiskey and have them bring ice and soda. That was the sensible way.

Good whiskey was very pleasant. It was one of the pleasant parts of life.

“What are you thinking, darling?”

Catherine could not walk very far now and I loved to ride out along the country roads with her. When there was a good day we had a splendid time and we never had a bad time.

We knew the baby was very close now and it gave us both a feeling as though something were hurrying us and we could not lose any time together.

The pains came quite regularly, then slackened off. Catherine was very excited.

When the pains were bad she called them good ones. When they started to fall off she was disappointed and ashamed.

“You go out, darling,” she said. “I think you are just making me self-conscious.” Her face tied up. “There. That was better. I so want to be a good wife and have this child without any foolishness.