Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

The best way to lose a woman was to show her a kind of life that one could offer her for only a few days.

A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We're living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress - to the future.

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

Sometimes I used to think that one day i should wake up, and all that had been would be over. forgotten, sunk, drowned. Nothing was sure - not even memory.

Our knowledge of life is limited to death

Может быть, у смерти совсем другое имя. Мы ведь видим ее всегда только с одной стороны. Мо

- Ты хочешь знать, как быть, если сделал что-то не так? Отвечаю, детка: никогда не проси про

A man has to have something he can put faith in. Can't you see that? What I want is someone that will love me; she would have me and I her. Otherwise a man may just go hang himself

I soon found out this much:-terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;-but it kills, if a man thinks about it.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5

We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.

We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial - I believe we are lost.

Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay/And the war would be over and done in a day."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3

The things men did or felt they had to do.

... We had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.

Beside us lies a fair-headed recruit in utter terror. He has buried his face in his hands, his helmet has fallen off. I fish hold of it and try to put it back on his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet off and like a child creeps under my arm, his head close to my breast. The little shoulders heave. Shoulders just like Kemmerich's. I let him be.

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 6

The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

Obuze, mitraliere, aburi de gaze, flotile de tancuri - strivire, devorare, moarte.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us. And good boots are hard to come by."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death.

I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?

There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best - in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly.

I always thought everyone was against war until I found out there are those who are all for it, especially those who do not have to go there.

It's not much. You begin by thinking there is something extraordinary about it. But you'll find out, when you've been out in the world a while longer, unhappiness is the commonest thing there is.

A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.

Pasaulis niekada neatrodo toks gražus, kaip tą akimirką, kaii jį paliekame, kai jums atima laisvę

Love should not be polluted with friendship.

The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.

У меня нет будущего. Не иметь будущего - это почти то же, что не подчиняться земным закон%

He’s afraid," Graber said.

"Yes, naturally. But he’s a good dog."

"And a man-eater."

"We’re all that."

"Why?"

"We are. And we think, just like that dog, that we are still good. And just like him we are looking for a bit of warmth and light and friendship.

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