Quotes from Erich Maria Remarque

Moral? yra žmoni? išradimas, bet ne gyvenimo išvada.

Thoughtfully I resume my patrolling to and fro between the benches. Now and again I catch a searching glance above the edge of a copy book. I stand still near the stove and look at the young faces. Most of them are good-natured and ordinary, some are sly, others stupid; but in a few there is a flicker of something brighter. For these life will not be so obvious and all things will not go so smoothly. Suddenly

the most progressive minister must shipwreck if he has a block of reactionary bureaucrats against him. And in Germany the bureaucrats all have their jobs still. —These pen-pushing Napoleons are invincible.

Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a grey subway;—it affects me as though it were my mother.

A bitch. No prostitute. A bitch. If you were a Russian you would understand.

Now I suddenly saw that I could be something to someone, simply because I was there, and that that person was happy because I was with her. Said like that, it sounds very simple; but when you think about it, it is a tremendous thing, a thing that knows no end. It is something that can break and transform one. It is love and yet something more —something for which one can live.

My healthy blood was powerless to cure the sick blood of my beloved. That was beyond understanding. And so is death.

While they went on writing and making speeches, we saw field hospitals and men dying: while they preached the service of the state as the greatest thing, we already knew that the fear of death is even greater.

A man has to have something he can put faith in. Can't you see that? What I want is someone that will love me; she would have me and I her. Otherwise a man may just go hang himself

Igal mehel on mõni hea omadus. Neid tuleb talle ainult näidata.

Iga elatud päev tähendab üks päev vähem olemasolu.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me dear boy, it means much more than when another uses it.

Children, that's what a man needs—children, who know nothing about it.

An accordion player posted himself at the curb and played La Paloma. The rug peddlers appeared with silken Keshans over their shoulders. A boy sold pistachios at the tables. It looked as it had always looked—until the newspaper boys came. The papers were almost torn from their hands and a few seconds later the terrace, with all the unfolded papers, appeared as if buried under a swarm of huge, white, bloodless moths sitting on their victims greedily, with noiseless flapping wings.

Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war if only one could get a little more sleep.

Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.

Hard... What does he mean by hard? And am I like that? Or is it only that I have no time for the fraud of so-called good manners, which strews a little glitter over black truths, and thinks that that has made them disappear.

When it is fairly quiet we can hear the transports behind the enemy lines rolling ceaselessly until dawn. Kat says that they do not go back but are bringing up troops—troops, munitions, and guns.

If only they would not look at one so-What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man's thumb-in their eyes!

our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life

Hteo sam nešto da kažem, ali nisam mogao. Teško je na?i re?i kad treba nešto stvarno kazati. A kad na?emo potrebne re?i, onda se stidimo da ih izgovorimo. Sve te re?i pripadaju prošlim vekovima. Naše doba još nema izraze za svoja ose?anja. Ona mogu da budu samo drugarska - sve ostalo nije pravo. - Pat - rekoh joj. - Stari hrabri druže...

I glance at my boots. They are big and clumsy, the breeches are tucked into them, and standing up one looks well-built and powerful in these great drainpipes. But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs.

He pointed to the sky in which Mars twinkled above the darkening roofs, large and red. "Yes, and they say that that fellow up there is closer to our earth than he has been for many years." He laughed. "Soon we'll read that somewhere a child has been born with a mole like a sword. And that it was raining blood somewhere else. The only thing missing now is the enigmatic comet of the Middle Ages to make all the ominous signs complete

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever.