Quotes About Struggle

Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.

It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.

Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me. -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12

You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well.

I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction.

The things men did or felt they had to do.

It's not much. You begin by thinking there is something extraordinary about it. But you'll find out, when you've been out in the world a while longer, unhappiness is the commonest thing there is.

Ligh doesn't shine in the light; it shines in the dark.

Extraordinary creatures you young people are, altogether. The past you hate, the present you despise, and the future is a matter of indifference. How do you suppose that can lead to any good end?

Haven't you ever observed how we live in an age of self-persecution? What a lot of things there are one might do that one doesn't - and yet why, God only knows. Work has become so tremendously important to-day, because so many have none, I suppose, that it kills everything else... Work, work, work . . . an abominable obsession - and always under the illusion it will be different later. And it never is different. Queer, isn't it, that anyone should do that with his life?

Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn.

A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We're living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour's worth of drill (occasioned by Tjaden's not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants "the same grub and the same pay," as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the "wrong" people currently do the fighting.

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

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

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.

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.

The cries continued. It is not men, they could not cry so terribly. Wounded horses, says Kat. It's unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.

My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be.

The tension has worn us out. It is a deadly tension that feels as if a jagged knife blade is being scraped along the spine. Our legs won't function, our hands are trembling and our bodies are like thin membranes stretched over barely repressed madness, holding in what would otherwise be an unrestrained outburst of endless scream.s. We have no flesh, no muscle now

šiaip ar taip, aš jau sp?jau štai k? pasteb?ti: siaub? galima pakelti, kol tu pasiduodi savo likimui, bet jis tave nužudo, jeigu tik imi apie j? galvoti.

Those are for us,' growls Detering. 'Don't talk rubbish,' Kat snaps back at him. 'You'll be lucky to get a coffin at all,' grins Tjaden, 'they'll just use a tarpaulin to wrap up that target-practice dummy you call a body, you wait and see.

Trommelfeuer, Sperrfeuer, Gardinenfeuer, Minen, Gas, Tanks, Maschinengewehre, Handgranaten - Worte, Worte aber sie umfassen das Grauen der Welt.

Kes suudab elada, ilma et unustaks? Aga kes suudab küllalt unustada? Mälestuste Å¡lakk, mis südant rebestab. Alles siis, kui sul enam midagi ei ole, mille nimel elada, oled vaba.