Erich Maria Remarque

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

“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.”

“Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

“Jetzt sehe ich erst, daß du ein Mensch bist wie ich. Ich habe gedacht an deine Handgranaten, an dein Bajonett und deine Waffen – jetzt sehe ich deine Frau und dein Gesicht und das Gemeinsame. Vergib mir, Kamerad! Wir sehen es immer zu spät. Warum sagt man uns nicht immer wieder, daß ihr ebenso arme Hunde seid wie wir, daß eure Mütter sich ebenso ängstigen wie unsere und daß wir die gleiche Furcht vor dem Tode haben und das gleiche Sterben und den gleichen Schmerz –. Vergib mir, Kamerad, wie konntest du mein Feind sein? Wenn wir diese Waffen und diese Uniform fortwerfen, könntest du ebenso mein Bruder sein wie Kat und Albert. Nimm zwanzig Jahre von mir, Kamerad, und stehe auf – nimm mehr, denn ich weiß nicht, was ich damit noch beginnen soll.”

“Čovek gubi hrabrost. Veruje da se može navići na razočaranja. To nije tačno. Ona svaki put sve više bole tako da se čovek uplaši. To je kao da se svaki put više opeče. I svaki put sporije zarasta. Ne želim da se još koji put opečem.”

“I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the darkness;--I belong to them and they to me; we all share the same fear and the same life...I could bury my face in them, in these voices, these words that have saved me and will stand by me.”

“With blinded eyes I stared at the sky, this grey, endless sky of a crazy god, who had made life and death for his amusement.”

“Haven't you ever observed how we live in an age of self-persecution? What a lot of things there are one might do that one doesn't - and yet why, God only knows. Work has become so tremendously important to-day, because so many have none, I suppose, that it kills everything else... Work, work, work . . . an abominable obsession - and always under the illusion it will be different later. And it never is different. Queer, isn't it, that anyone should do that with his life?”

“Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.”

“The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.”

“I did not want to think so much about her. I wanted to take her as an unexpected, delightful gift, that had come and would go again — nothing more. I meant not to give room to the thought that it could ever be more. I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing.”

“I had the feeling of slipping down a smooth bottomless pit. It had nothing to do with Breuer and the people. It had nothing to do with Pat even. It was the melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them; that love begins with a human being but does not end in him; and that everything can be there: a human being, love, happiness, life — and that yet in some terrible way it is always too little, and grows ever less the more it seems.”

“A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, a single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. 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.”

“Little by little things began to assume a new aspect. The sense of insecurity vanished, words came of themselves, I was no longer so painfully conscious of everything I said. I drank on and felt the great soft wave approach and embrace me; the dark hour began to fill with pictures and stealthily the noiseless procession of dreams appeared again superimposed on the dreary, grey landscape of existence.”

“Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.”

“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.”

“I felt the first soft glow of intoxication that makes the blood warmer and spreads an illusion of adventure over uncertainty.”

“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.”

“Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me." -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12”

“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.”

“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

“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”

“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”

“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”

“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”

“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.”

“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…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.”

“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.”

“To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.”

“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.”

“Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.”

“Təkcə onu görürdü və bilirdi ki,onu belə sirli-soraqlı eləyən özünün vurğun könlüdür. Bilirdi ki, bundan da qəşəng,bundan da ağıllı, bundan da saf üzlər var. Ancaq onu da bilirdi ki, başqa üz yox,məhz bu üz onun qəlbinə hakim kəsilib. Bu hakimliyi də ona özü vermişdi!”

“– Gəlməkdə yaxşı elədim? – Joan soruşdu.– Bilmirəm, Joan.– Bilirsən... Bilməlisən!”

“We agree that it's the same for everyone; not only for us here, but everywhere, for everyone who is of our age; to some more, and to others less. It is the common fate of our generation. ”

“The days, the weeks, the years out here shall come back again, and our dead comrades shall then stand up again and march with us, our heads shall be clear, we shall have a purpose, and so we shall march, our dead comrades beside us, the years at the Front behind us:—against whom, against whom?”

“It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.”

“Nie entschuldigen, Baby. Nie reden. Blumen schicken. Ohne Brief. Nur Blumen. Die decken alles zu. Sogar Gräber.”

“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”

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

“No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.”

“Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum. ”

“Ljubav nije jezero u kome se uvek može ogledati... ona ima plimu i oseku i olupine i potonule gradove i bure i kovčege sa zlatom i bisere… ali biseri su duboko...”

“The things men did or felt they had to do.”

“После отново чух гласа на оня ухаещ на парфюм веселяк, който ми обясняваше, че не сега, а след време, когато ще го моля коленопреклонно, ще ме изгори жив, и ми разказваше какво ще стане с очите ми.”

“They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.”

“It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.”

“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.”

“There was only the broad square with the scattered dim moons of the street lamps and with the monumental stone arch which receded into the mist as though it would prop up the melancholy sky and protect beneath itself the faint lonely flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness.”