The remark suggests that serious wrongdoing does not always begin with obviously malicious intentions. Actions that later become destructive may start in circumstances that appear harmless, innocent or even well meant. The danger lies in how small compromises, desires or rationalisations can develop over time, making conduct that once seemed unthinkable gradually easier to accept.

In A Moveable Feast, the observation fits Hemingway’s retrospective interest in choices whose consequences became clearer only later. The line does not claim that innocence itself is wicked. Rather, it points to the distance that can exist between the apparent beginning of an action and its eventual moral consequences. More broadly, the quotation can be read as a warning against assuming that harmless origins guarantee harmless outcomes. Ethical judgement may require attention not only to intentions, but also to how decisions develop and whom they ultimately affect.

Full quotation

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence. So you live day by day and enjoy what you have and do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to day as in a war.”