# Quote — Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

> He always thought of the sea as la mar, which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her, but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fisherman, those who used buoys as floats for their lines or had motorboats bought when the shark lovers had much money, spoke of her as el mar, which is masculine, they spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine, as something that gave or withheld great favors. If she did wild or wicked things, it is because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

- Author: [Ernest Hemingway](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway.md)
- Book: [The Old Man and the Sea](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/the-old-man-and-the-sea.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea_(1952)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/the-old-man-and-the-sea/he-always-thought

## More from this book

> He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/the-old-man-and-the-sea/he-was-an-old.md)

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

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/the-old-man-and-the-sea/but-man-is-not.md)

> “Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
>
> “I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernest-hemingway/the-old-man-and-the-sea/age-is-my-alarm.md)