Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet On The Western Front Quotes
We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.
The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.
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.
Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.
And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.
We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.
If only they would not look at one so-What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man's thumb-in their eyes!
our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life
we developed a firm, practical feeling of solidarity, which grew, on the battlefield, into the best thing that the war produced - comradeship in arms.
And be very careful at the front, Paul.”Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!
A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.
And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death.
The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.
We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.
We don't act like that because we are in good humor we are in a good humor because otherwise we should go to pieces.