Erich Maria Remarque Quotes (63 quotes)

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 6
Context: 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 dugout I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

“Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Night in Lisbon

Source: The Night in Lisbon

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

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)

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

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“We have so much to say, and we shall never say it.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

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

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“Why does a man live?
-In order to think about it…”

Erich Maria Remarque

Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

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

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“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?”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul to the corpse of a French man he has just killed, Ch. 9
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Context: 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?

“It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

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

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

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

Erich Maria Remarque

“Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.”