Erich Maria Remarque citations

Page 2

“Je voulais dire quelque chose, mais je n'y parvins pas. C'est difficile de trouver des mots lorsqu'on a quelque chose à dire.”

“Personne ne peut t'être plus étranger que la personne que tu as aimée jadis.”

“Ce n'est qu'en se retrouvant toujours seul qu'on connaît le bonheur d'être ensemble.”

“Ce qu'on laisse approcher, on veut le retenir. Et on ne peut rien retenir.”

“On devient mélancolique lorsqu'on pense à la vie… cynique lorsqu'on voit ce qu'en font la plupart des gens.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well.”

“The things men did or felt they had to do.”

“Sweet dreams though the guns are booming.”

“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.”

“Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.”

“What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love!”

“I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”