Quotes from Erich Maria Remarque

I am aware that I, without realizing it, have lost my feelings -- I don't belong here anymore, I live in an alien world. I prefer to be left alone, not disturbed by anybody. They talk too much - I can't relate to them -- they are only busy with the superficial things

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by war.

I won't be seeing you again, he said. It's just as well. I've told you too much to want to see you again. I wasn't so sure of that. It seemed possible that he would want to see me later on for that very reason. I alone, he believed, possessed an unfalsified image of his life. But that could make him hate me; perhaps he would feel that I had taken his wife from him, this time irrevocably—if he really believed that his own memory deceived him and only mine remained clear.

The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation.

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.

I soon found out this much:--terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;--but it kills, if a man thinks about it.

Laikam gan katrs k?dam bija labs cilv?ks. Un k?dam tieši pret?ji.

We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled-- we are indifferent. We might exist there; but should we really live there? We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial-- I believe we are lost.

Pentru mine frontul e o vâltoare halucinant?.Chiar când eÈ™ti departe de centrul ei, în ape liniÈ™tite, îi simÈ›i puterea aspiratoare ce te atrage, încet, inevitabil f?r? putin?? de împotrivire.

Keista,- tar? Lencas po valand?l?s,- kod?l visokiems žmon?ms paminklai statomi, o kod?l nepasta?ius paminklo m?nuliui arba žydin?iam medžiui.

Ona je zabacila glavu i pila. Kosa joj pade na ramena; ona je u tom trenutku izgledala kao da je sva samo pijenje. Ravik je to na njoj primetio ranije. Potpuno se predavala onome što je trenutno ?inila. Neodre?eno ga se ta?e misao da u tome nema samo draži nego i opasnosti. Bila je samo pijenje kad je pila; samo ljubav kad je ljubila; samo o?ajanje kad je o?ajavala; i samo zaborav kad je zaboravljala.

Through the years our business has been killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death.

Un br?žiem, kad klusums br?c, tas j?p?rm?c ar visska??ko, kas cilv?kam ir.

Izt?le nekad nepievi?.

?udna stvar'', mislim, ''videli smo toliko mrtvaca u ratu, i znamo da nas je dva miliona beskorisno palo - zašto smo onda tako uzbu?eni zbog jednog jedinog, a dva miliona smo ve? skoro zaboravili?'' No to je valjda zato što je pojedinac uvek smrt - a dva miliona uvek samo statistika.

all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death.

We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down - now for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him . . . No longer do we lie helpless . . . we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged.

Ich bin nicht mehr ein zitterndes Stück Dasein allein im Dunkel - ich gehöre zu ihnen und sie zu mir, wir haben alle die gleiche Angst und das gleiche Leben, wir sind verbunden auf eine einfache und schwere Art. Ich möchte mein Gesicht in sie hineindrücken, in die Stimmen, diese paar Worte, die mich gerettet haben und die mir beistehen werden.

You do, Bob. You have the requirements for it. A certain simplicity is necessary for love. You have it. Keep it. It is a gift of God. Never to be gotten again once it is lost." "Don't take it to heart too much, though, Baby," said Lenz with a grin. "It's no shame to be born stupid. Only to die stupid.

Dažbr?d cilv?ks pavisam aizmirst, ka vi?š dz?vo. - Es gan to arvien apzinos. Tikai nezinu l?g?, ko ar to ies?kt.

How shabby the truth can become when one articulates it.

I felt it, it excited me, and then it struck like a wave against the barrier reef—I knew she did not mean me at all; she meant someone else, some figure of her fantasy, Rolf or Rudolf; and perhaps she did not mean them either, perhaps they were just names thrown up from dark, subterranean streams, without roots or connections.

Re nu, k?di m?s esam! Baid?mies savu j?tu. Un, tikl?dz t?s saman?m, t? t?l?t dom?jam, ka esam kr?pnieki.

Õhtu teeb maailma ilusamaks. Mitte jooksukraavides, küll aga rahuajal.