Quotes from Erich Maria Remarque

They wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.

Nachdenklich wandere ich wieder zwischen den Bänken hin und her. Ab und zu trifft mich über einen Heftrand hinweg ein forschender Blick. Ich bleibe am Ofen stehen und sehe mir die jungen Gesichter an. Die meisten sind brav und mittelmäßig, manche verschmitzt, andere dumm - aber in einigen flacker etwas Helleres. Denen wird in Leben nicht alles so selbstverständlich erscheinen und nicht alles so glatt gehen.

Istina je povre?enom ose?anju uvek surova i skoro nepodnošljiva.

Her mouth speaks words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.

Turkl?t cita v?rieša sieviete vienm?r ir piecreiz iek?rojam?ka par t?du, kas dab?jama. T?da jau sen ir tikumu norma.

There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?

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. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.

I see their dark forms, their beards move in the wind. I know nothing of them except that they are prisoners; and that is exactly what troubles me. Their life is obscure and guiltless;—if I could know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what their burdens are, then my emotion would have an object and might become sympathy.

This is the first time I have killed with my hands, whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doing. Kat and Kropp and Müller have experienced it already, when they have hit someone; it happens to many, in hand-to-hand fighting especially— 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.

shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love. The

Don't ask anything more. There are more secrets in your hair than in a thousand questions.

Albert expresses it: "The war has ruined us for everything." He is right. 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. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war.

we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.

We have to take things as lightly as we can, so we make the most of every opportunity, and nonsense stands stark and immediate beside horror. It cannot be otherwise, that is how we hearten ourselves

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.

It was not any recognition of their beauty and their significance that attracted us, but the communion, the feeling of a comradeship with the things and events of our existence, which cut us off and made the world of our parents a thing incomprehensible to us—for then we surrendered ourselves to events and were lost in them, and the least little thing was enough to carry us down the stream of eternity.

Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man.

JesteÅ›my nikÅ'ymi pÅ'omykami, zaledwie ochranianymi sÅ'abymi Å›cianami przed nawaÅ'nicÄ… rozpadu i bezsensownoÅ›ci, w której trzepocemy siÄ™ i niekiedy prawie ?e toniemy.

There are many such stories, they are mostly far more bitter. All the same, they have nothing to do with mutiny or lead-swinging. They are merely honest and call a thing by its name; for there is a very great deal of fraud, injustice, and baseness in the army.

Mul tuleb nõrkushoog peale ja ma tunnen äkki, et ei suuda enam. Ma ei tahagi enam sõimata, sest see on mõttetu, vaid üksnes maha kukkuda ja mitte kunagi enam tõusta.

Aliás, é engraçado como o infortúnio do mundo provém tão freqüentemente de homens baixos: são muito mais enérgicos, de gênio muito pior do que os indivíduos altos.

We are not beaten, for as soldiers we are better and more experienced; we are simply crushed and driven back by overwhelming superior forces.

She let herself drift; the crowd sustained her and did not shock her; she loved it because it was life, unknown, thoughtless, foolish life devoted to the thoughtless and foolish goals which bobbed on its surface like colored buoys on a choppy sea.