Quotes from Erich Maria Remarque

I love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure – and at the same time I see behind him woods and stars, and a clear voice utters words that bring me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots, belt, and a knapsack, taking the road that lies before him under the high heaven, quickly forgetting and seldom sorrowful, for ever pressing on under the wide night sky.

Perhaps there is really nothing else when everything is falling to pieces, I think, except this bit of togetherness and even that is a sweet deception, for when someone else really needs you you cannot follow him or stand by him. I have noticed that often enough in the war when I looked into the face of a dead comrade. Each one of us has his own death and must suffer it alone; no one can help him then.

What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at school?

Ljubav nije jezero u kome se uvek može ogledati... ona ima plimu i oseku i olupine i potonule gradove i bure i kov?ege sa zlatom i bisere… ali biseri su duboko...

I don't know what it is. I simply can't stand it. It's like a hand reaching out of the dark. It is fear—blind fear as if it were lying in wait somewhere for me.

And in the night you realize, when you wake out of a dream, overcome and captivated by the enchantment of visions that crowd in on each other, just how fragile a handhold, how tenuous a boundary separates us from darkness - we are little flames, inadequately sheltered by thin walls from the tempest of dissolution and insensibility in which we flicker and are often all but extinguished. Then the muted sounds of battle surrounds us, and we creep into ourselves and stare wide-eyed into the night.

I want that quiet rapture agin. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick join the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.

To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers. 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.

There is no guilt in feelings ever.

Our damnable memory is a sieve. It wants to survive. And survival is only possible through forgetfulness.

Nie entschuldigen, Baby. Nie reden. Blumen schicken. Ohne Brief. Nur Blumen. Die decken alles zu. Sogar Gräber.

The more primitive a man is the better he believes himself to be.

Comrade, I say to the dead man, but I say it calmly, today you tomorrow me, but if I come out of it, comrade, I will fight against this, that has struck us both down; from you taken life-and from me-? Life also. I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen again

A man is courageous only when he is also afraid.

So I thought. Are you happy? What's that? Don't you know yet? But who really knows what it is? Dancing on the head of a pin, maybe.

To a woman flattery is not flattery.It is a compliment, which unfortunately in these miserable days has become all to rare. A woman is not a piece of steel furniture; she is a flower - she does not ask for reality; she wants the warm, gay sun of flattery.It is better to say something pretty to her every day, than to slave grimly for her all your life.

Don't ask about the consequences if you want to do something. Otherwise you'll never do it.

He's afraid, Graber said. Yes, naturally. But he's a good dog. And a man-eater. We're all that. Why? We are. And we think, just like that dog, that we are still good. And just like him we are looking for a bit of warmth and light and friendship.

Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights

One is never too young. Only always too old.

Niemand kennt mich hier, dachte sie. Und niemand weiß, dass ich hier bin! Sie empfand diese Anonymität wie ein sonderbares, stürmisches Glück, das Glück, einem Glück entkommenzu sein, auf kurze Zeit oder für immer.

See what has become of us. As far as I know, only the old Greeks had gods of drinking and the joy of life: Bacchus and Dionysus. Instead of that we have Freud, inferiority complexes and the psychoanalysis. We're afraid of the too great words in love and not afraid of much too great words in politics. A sorry generation!

People tend to ask too many questions in love,and once you begin really wanting to know the answers,love is on its way out.

Sweet words. Gentle deceptive balm. Help, love, to belong together, to come back again— words, sweet words. Nothing but words. How many words existed for this simple, wild, cruel attraction of two bodies! What a rainbow of imagination, lies, sentiment, and self-deception enclosed it!