Erich Maria Remarque: Quotes about the world

“It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is often brought on by short people. They are so much more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows.”

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

“Nothing is the mirror in which you see the world.”

“I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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