The line suggests that suffering can leave lasting damage while also producing forms of strength. The image of being “strong at the broken places” presents resilience not as a return to an untouched state, but as an adaptation to injury, loss or hardship. What has been broken remains part of the person’s history, even if they become more capable of enduring future difficulties.

The fuller passage is considerably darker than the isolated sentence can sound. In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway places resilience alongside the inevitability and apparent unfairness of death. Courage, gentleness and goodness offer no protection from suffering; the world harms people without regard to merit. The passage therefore resists a simple inspirational reading. Some people become stronger after being tested, but others are destroyed by the same forces. Its central tension is between human endurance and the limits of endurance in a world where suffering and mortality cannot ultimately be escaped.

Full quotation

“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.”