Quotes from Erich Maria Remarque

I cannot bear to look at his hands, they are like wax. Under the nails is the dirt of the trenches, it shows through blue-black like poison.

From this day forth I place dressmakers above philosophers. Those people bring beauty into life, and that's worth a hundred times the most unfathomable meditations.

The trucks roll monotonously onwards, the shouts are monotonous, the falling rain is monotonous. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead men up at the front of the truck, on the body of the little recruit with a wound that is far too big for his hip, it's falling on Kemmerich's grave, and it's falling in our hearts.

We didn't want the war, the others say the same thing—and yet half the world is in it all the same." "But there are more lies told by the other side than by us," say I; "just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write those lies ought to go out and hang themselves. They are real culprits.

A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.

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!

The mist was like a faint perfume.

Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks - shattering, corroding, death. Dysentery, influenza, typhus - scalding, choking, death.

How beautiful it is when one lives completely and not with just a part of oneself. When one is full to the rim and calm because there is nothing more to get in.

Help when you can; do everything then— but when you can no longer do anything, forget it! Turn away! Pull yourself together. Compassion is meant for quiet times. Not when life is at stake. Bury the dead and devour life! You'll still need it. Mourning is one thing, facts are another. One doesn't mourn less when one sees the facts and accepts them. That is how one survives.

Jugend! Wir sind alle nicht mehr als zwanzig Jahre. Aber jung? Jugend? Das ist lange her. Wir sind alte Leute.

Wir sind keine Jugend mehr. Wir wollen die Welt nicht mehr stürmen. Wir sind Flüchtende. Wir flüchten vor uns. Vor unserem Leben. Wir waren achtzehn Jahre und begannen die Welt und das Dasein zu lieben; wir mussten darauf schießen.

The screaming of the beasts becomes louder. One can no longer distinguish whence in this now quiet silvery landscape it comes; ghostly, invisible, it is everywhere, between heaven and earth it rolls on immeasurably.

Erst das Lazarett zeigt, was der Krieg ist.

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

Ali hteti zadržati prošlost zna?i odre?i se budu?nosti.

Beyond this our life did not extend. And of this nothing remains.

Kui oled surnud, oled kole tähtis – kui elad, ei hooli sust keegi.

Those who consider themselves fair, are particularly ruthless.

Para mí el frente es un siniestro remolino.

Teadmine ei tee kunagi valu. Valu teeb vaid "enne" ja "pärast".

A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.

that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole

Everything must have been fraudulent and pointless if thousands of years of civilization weren't even able to prevent this river of blood, couldn't stop these torture chambers existing in their hundreds of thousands. Only a military hospital can really show you what war is.