Erich Maria Remarque: Trending quotes

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Erich Maria Remarque: 126   quotes 114   likes

“Love should not be polluted with friendship.”

Erich Maria Remarque

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

Love , Friendship

“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?”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

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

Forgiveness , Fear , Death

“A hospital alone shows what war is.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul after seeing the horrific state of wounded soldiers in a hospital near the front, Ch. 10
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

War

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Epigraph
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Death , Men , War , Books

“Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. 'Mostly by one country badly offending another,' answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. 'A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.' 'Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?' growls Kropp. 'I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other—' 'Then I haven't any business here at all,' replies Tjaden, 'I don't feel myself offended.' 'Well, let me tell you,' says Albert sourly,' it doesn't apply to tramps like you.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

'Then I can be going home right away,' retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh.
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 9

War , People , Stupidity , Feeling

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

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 4

Animals

“No, we are not related. No, we are not related. 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 usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

“A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul after visiting Russian prisoners, Ch. 8
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

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

Erich Maria Remarque

Source: Flotsam

World

“I've not much interest in the important things of life. Only in the beautiful things. Just this lilac here makes me happy.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Life , Beauty , Happiness

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque

Source: Flotsam

World , Thinking

“… but that's what mankind is like: they only prize what they no longer possess.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

“We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

Love , Life , World

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

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

Wisdom , Idea

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

World , Way , Learning

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

World , Future

“I don’t want to get old.”
“You won’t get old. Life will pass over your face, that will be all, and it will become more beautiful. One is old only when one no longer feels.”
“No. When one no longer loves.”

Erich Maria Remarque

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

Love , Life , Beauty , Feeling