Erich Maria Remarque: Quotes about life

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Our knowledge of life is limited to death”

“Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.”

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

“Come let me kiss you. Life was never so precious as today— when it meant so little.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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