Quotes from Erich Maria Remarque

Kantorek would say that we stood on the threshold of life. And so it would seem. We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away. For the others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the end may be. We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.

Gribu doties proj?m, bet kaut kas mani spiež palikt. Ja cilv?kam rodas iesp?ja moc?t pašam sevi, tad vi?š to vis l?ti gar?m nelaiž.

?nsan yaln?z oldu mu tabiat? incelemeye, sevmeye ba?l?yor.

Ne?emo se više ni skim sastajati. Prava ljubav ne podnosi svet. I onda ne?e biti ni nastupa ljubomore, ni loma.

From the kitchen was now issuing the smell of freshly brewed coffee and I heard Frida rumbling about. It was curious, but the smell of coffee made me more cheerful. I knew that from the war; it was never the big things that consoled one—it was always the unimportant, the little things.

Where would the world be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly.

But our comrades are dead, we cannot help them, they have their rest—and who knows what is waiting for us? We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short.

It was not the first time I had caught her so. She used to come to us for two hours every morning to clean up the workshop; and though one might leave as much money lying around as one liked she would never disturb it—but schnapps she could smell out as far off as a rat a slice of bacon.

we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.

In the afternoon, about three, he is dead. I

ÄŒovek je u namerama uvek veliki, ali ne i u ostvarivanju.

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. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him, he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me: Time and my thoughts.

prisoners come across to us. They seem nervous and fearful, though most of them are big fellows with beards—they look like meek, scolded, St. Bernard dogs. They slink about

Nie jeste?my ju? beztroscy; jeste?my straszliwie oboj?tni.

Nikad ne treba da me ?ekaš. Strašno je ?ekati. - Ti, Robi, baš ništa ne razumeš. Strašno je samo kad nema šta da se ?eka.

up to the belly. When the attack starts I will let myself fall into the water, with my face as deep in the mud as I can keep it without suffocating. I must pretend to be dead. Suddenly

Tikai p?c piln?gas izš?iršan?s rodas patiesa interese par visu, kas attiecas uz otru cilv?ku. Tas ir viens no m?las paradoksiem.

But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

And at night, waking out of a dream, overwhelmed and bewitched by the crowding apparitions, a man perceives with alarm how slight is the support, how thin the boundary that divides him from the darkness. We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.

We sit as if in our graves waiting only to be closed in.

Today we have done an hour's saluting drill because Tjaden failed to salute a major smartly enough. Kat can't get it out of his head. "You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well," he says. Kropp

I merely crawl still farther under the coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it. Before

They are not really thoughts; they are memories that come to torment me in my weakness and put me into a strange mood. Up go