Top quotes by Erich Maria Remarque

On the steps is a machine-gun ready for action. The square is empty; only the streets that lead into it are jammed with people. It would be madness to go farther - the machine-gun is covering the square. Votes: 23

The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off. Votes: 21

The later it gets the more disturbed the city becomes. I go with Albert through the streets. Men are standing in groups at every corner. Rumours are flying. It is said that the military have already fired on a procession of demonstrating workers. Votes: 10

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death. Votes: 6

A hospital alone shows what war is. Votes: 5

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. Votes: 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 Votes: 5

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. Votes: 4

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. Votes: 4

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!" Votes: 4

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world. Votes: 3

The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it Votes: 3

Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end. Votes: 3

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 Votes: 2

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. Votes: 2

We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad. Votes: 2

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 Votes: 2

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 Votes: 2

When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind. Votes: 2

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. Votes: 1

We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thingnot 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. Votes: 1

The things men did or felt they had to do. Votes: 1

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. Votes: 1

The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. Votes: 1

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. Votes: 1

Obuze, mitraliere, aburi de gaze, flotile de tancuri - strivire, devorare, moarte. Votes: 1

How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and it is now touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but from out of the night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it together. Votes: 1

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? Votes: 1

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. Votes: 1

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. Votes: 1

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside. Votes: 0

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting. Votes: 0

I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh. Votes: 0

(Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Monotonously the lorries sway, monotonously come the calls, monotonously falls the rain. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead up the line, on the body of the little recruit with the wound that is so much too big for his hip; it falls on Kemmerich's grave; it falls in our hearts. Votes: 0

... clothes sometimes gave one more of a lift than any philosophic comforting. Votes: 0

All Quiet on the Western Front. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

The miracle has passed me by; it has touched but not changed me; I still have the same name and I know I will probably bear it until the end of my days; I am no phoenix; resurrection is not for me; I have tried to fly but I am tumbling like a dazzled, awkward rooster back to earth, back behind the barbed wires. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

She was very beautiful and he felt he loved her. She was not beautiful as a state or a picture is beautiful; she was beautiful as a meadow across which the wind blows. It was life that pulsed in her and that had formed her into what she was. Votes: 0

There is no guilt in feelings ever. Votes: 0

Anyway, there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that was the most comfortable for themselves.But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy. Votes: 0

You can deceive yourself with truth too. That's an even more dangerous dream. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck. Votes: 0

One always expects something else. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, then they are if they were free. Votes: 0

They are more human and more brotherly towards one another, it seems to me, than we are. But perhaps that is merely because they feel themselves to be more unfortunate than us. Votes: 0

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum. Votes: 0

Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel! Votes: 0

It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We have our dreams because without them we could not bear the truth. Votes: 0

But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else. Votes: 0

we have so much to say, and we shall never say it. Votes: 0

Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living. Votes: 0

For a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real, profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness even - love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge. Votes: 0

No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect. Votes: 0

Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it. Votes: 0

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world. Votes: 0

Am I jealous? he thought, astonished. Jealous of the chance object to which she has attached herself? Jealous of something that does not concern me? One can be jealous of a love that has turned away, but not of that to which it has turned. Votes: 0

Anything you can settle with money is cheap. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

... but that's what mankind is like: they only prize what they no longer possess. Votes: 0

Come let me kiss you. Life was never so precious as today— when it meant so little. Votes: 0

Every little bean must be heard as well as seen! Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Courage is the fairest adornment of youth. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through. Votes: 0

Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it. Votes: 0

I wandered through the streets thinking of all the things I might have said and might have done had I been other than I was. Votes: 0

Mirrors are there when we are and yet they never give anything back to us but our own image. Never, never shall we know what they are when they are alone or what is behind them. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace-time, would be out of place here. Votes: 0

We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers - we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The war has ruined us for everything. Votes: 0

I, too, am going to go away soon,' she says, 'I am weary and weary of my weariness. Everything is beginning to be a little empty and full of leave-taking and melancholy and waiting. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Nothing is the mirror in which you see the world. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love! Votes: 0

I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do. Votes: 0

And even if these scenes from our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not. Votes: 0

Heaven Has No Favorites Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them. Votes: 0

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself. Votes: 0

Our knowledge of life is limited to death Votes: 0

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and again and often forever. Votes: 0

Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without. Votes: 0

I felt the first soft glow of intoxication that makes the blood warmer and spreads an illusion of adventure over uncertainty. Votes: 0

At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs. Votes: 0

It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hour's bombardment unscratched. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck. Votes: 0

Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone. Votes: 0

My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be. Votes: 0

Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour's worth of drill (occasioned by Tjaden's not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants "the same grub and the same pay,” as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the "wrong” people currently do the fighting. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

Sweet dreams though the guns are booming. Votes: 0

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost. Votes: 0

Trenches, hospitals, the common grave--there are no other possibilities. Votes: 0

I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us...Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that. Votes: 0

The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express oneself in any other way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language. Votes: 0

Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain. Votes: 0

The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come. Votes: 0

One often feels as though something had happened before, I remember. It comes quite close to you and stands there and you know it was just this way once before, exactly so; for an instant you almost know how it must go on, but then it disappears as you try to lay hold of it like smoke or a dead memory. "We could never remember, Isabelle," I say. "It's like the rain. That has also become one, out of two gasses, oxygen and hydrogen, which no longer remember they were once gasses. Now they are only rain and have no memory of an earlier time. Votes: 0

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. Votes: 0

We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war. Votes: 0

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. Votes: 0