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Who really said it

The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places

Written by Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961 · American novelist & short-story writer
Verified Free to reuse

Genuine, and easy to pin down: the sentence is narrator Frederic Henry’s interior monologue in Chapter XXXIV of A Farewell to Arms, first published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in September 1929. The 1929 text prints it as “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places” — two words, no comma.

Last verified 6 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places” Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), Chapter XXXIV. Verified via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

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Evoking the world of Ernest Hemingway — American novelist, short-story writer & war correspondent. Theme: "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

Where the line actually appears

Work
A Farewell to Arms
Location
Chapter XXXIV
First published
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, September 1929 (serialised in Scribner’s Magazine, May–October 1929)
Speaker
Frederic Henry, the novel’s first-person narrator

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 every one 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. Chapter XXXIV, in full

Transcribed from the Project Gutenberg text of the 1929 Charles Scribner’s Sons edition. Note “every one” — two words — and the absence of a comma after “everyone” in the popular form.

Read Chapter XXXIV in the Project Gutenberg text

How we verified it

  • The sentence appears verbatim in Chapter XXXIV of the Project Gutenberg full text ↗ of A Farewell to Arms, transcribed from the 1929 Charles Scribner’s Sons edition, where it reads “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its sourced section under A Farewell to Arms (1929), Chapter 34 — not among the disputed or misattributed entries.
  • Quote Investigator ↗ treats the 1929 passage as authentic Hemingway while debunking the separate, blended saying “We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in,” which it says was “not crafted by Ernest Hemingway.”
  • Publication history ↗: serialised in Scribner’s Magazine from the May to October 1929 issues and published as a book in September 1929, with a first print run of about 31,000 copies.
Public domain

A Farewell to Arms was first published in 1929, so the novel — and this sentence — are in the public domain in the United States. Project Gutenberg’s edition #75201 ↗, released 24 January 2025, states its copyright status as “Public domain in the USA.” Hemingway’s later works remain in copyright; this one no longer is.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What gets changed, and what gets falsely added

The attribution is right — this one really is Hemingway. What goes wrong is the wording, the stopping point, and a neighbouring saying that borrows his authority.

“everyone” as one word variant

The Scribner’s text of 1929 prints every one as two words: “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” You can read the sentence in place in Chapter XXXIV of the Project Gutenberg full text ↗. The one-word spelling is a modernisation, not Hemingway’s.

“some are strong at the broken places” variant

A widely copied aggregator version swaps many for some and adds commas — BrainyQuote ↗ carries it as “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” The 1929 text says many.

“We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in.” not Hemingway

Constantly pinned on Hemingway, and constantly confused with this line. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes it “was not crafted by Ernest Hemingway,” hypothesising instead that his 1929 sentence and Leonard Cohen’s 1992 lyric about cracks and light both shaped it; the Hemingway ascription entered circulation by 2013.

Hemingway’s personal creed context

The sentence is not an authorial motto: it sits inside the first-person narration of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, and in the printed paragraph ↗ it is immediately followed by “But those that will not break it kills.” The uplift is real; so is the sentence that cancels it.

The line is authentically Hemingway’s — A Farewell to Arms, Chapter XXXIV, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1929 and now free to read in full ↗. Quote it as he wrote it, and ideally do not stop at the full stop.

Context

Why the sentence keeps getting cut in half

Chapter XXXIV is the calm in the middle of the storm. Frederic Henry has deserted the Italian army, found Catherine again, and for a few pages the novel simply lets him be happy — which is exactly when Hemingway drops the coldest paragraph in the book. The consoling clause everyone posts is the second sentence of five, and the three that follow it take the comfort straight back: “But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”

Quoted whole, it is a shrug at an indifferent universe. Quoted from the full stop after “broken places,” it becomes a greetings-card promise that suffering makes you stronger. Both versions are Hemingway’s words; only one is his point.

The line everyone shares stops one full stop before the line that undoes it.

Read the full story

The novel reached readers twice in 1929: serialised in Scribner’s Magazine across the May to October issues, then published in book form by Charles Scribner’s Sons in September, with a first print run of roughly 31,000 copies.

The passage is written in the first person by Lieutenant Frederic Henry, the novel’s narrator — not delivered as an authorial aphorism. That distinction is usually lost the moment the sentence is lifted out of the paragraph.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Failure Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

A Farewell to Arms — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s free edition, transcribed from the 1929 Charles Scribner’s Sons printing and marked public domain in the USA.
Chapter XXXIVstandardebooks.org

Standard Ebooks’ clean reading text of the chapter that contains the passage.
Ernest Hemingway — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in its sourced section under A Farewell to Arms (1929), Chapter 34.
“We Are All Broken. That’s How the Light Gets In”quoteinvestigator.com

Quote Investigator traces the popular saying that is blended out of this Hemingway line and a Leonard Cohen lyric — and finds Hemingway did not write it.
A Farewell to Armsen.wikipedia.org

Publication history: serialised in Scribner’s Magazine May–October 1929, book publication September 1929.
Ernest Hemingwayen.wikipedia.org

Biography, with birth and death dates and the 1953 Pulitzer and 1954 Nobel awards.

The true author

Who was Ernest Hemingway?

Ernest Hemingway

1899–1961 · American novelist, short-story writer & war correspondent

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on 21 July 1899 and died on 2 July 1961. He drove an ambulance on the Italian front in the First World War, the experience he rebuilt as fiction in A Farewell to Arms (1929). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 — and, thanks to a prose style that is easy to imitate badly, he is now one of the most misquoted writers on the internet.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929. Chapter XXXIV. Full text: Project Gutenberg ebook #75201 (public domain in the USA).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-world-breaks-everyone-and-afterward-many-are-strong-at/

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