Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

Trenches, hospitals, the common grave--there are no other possibilities.

My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be.

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

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

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.

You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal—no one will see it. But when a button is missing—everyone sees that.

Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.

You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well.

The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it

... clothes sometimes gave one more of a lift than any philosophic comforting.

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

Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? That is long ago. We are old folk.

Every little bean must be heard as well as seen!

That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances.

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!

the invisible storehouse in nothingness, called memory.

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

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.

A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.

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!

Where would the world be if we took every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best- in a way that cost them nothing.

we developed a firm, practical feeling of solidarity, which grew, on the battlefield, into the best thing that the war produced - comradeship in arms.

our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life

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!

When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind.

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.

And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.

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.

One lost easiest what one held in one’s arms— never what one left.

You can deceive yourself with truth too. That's an even more dangerous dream.

Petnaest srećnih godina su kratke - odgovorih. Petnaest nesrećnih godina su duge i pružaju čoveku mnogo iskustva.

There had never been any more between us thanchance had brought. But perhaps that makes a greater indebtednessand binds closer than much else

A man has to have something he can put faith in.

There is no guilt in feelings ever.

...and without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die.

We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short.

One always expects something else.

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

My healthy blood was powerless to cure the sick blood of my beloved. That was beyond understanding. And so is death.

A neat little apartment with a neat little bourgeois life. A neat little security on the edge of the abyss. Do you really see that?

Suddenly he knew all the things he should have said.

Love should not be polluted with friendship.

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.

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.

Может быть, у смерти совсем другое имя. Мы ведь видим ее всегда только с одной стороны. Может быть, смерть - это совершенная любовь между нами и Богом.