Quotes About Change

No one will understand us – because in front of us there is a generation of men who did, it is true, share the years out here with us, but who already had a bed and a job and who are going back to their old positions, where they will forget all about the war – and behind us, a new generation is growing up, one like we used to be, and that generation will be strangers to us and will push us aside.

But I also knew that there was no going back. One can never go back; nothing and no one is ever the same. All that remained was an occasional evening of sadness, the sadness that we all feel because everything passes and because man is the only animal who knows it.

Albert expresses it: The war has ruined us for everything.

A miracle is never perfect when it happens, there are always little disappointments. But once it's gone for good and nothing can change it, memory could make it perfect and then it would never change. If I can just call it to life now, won't it always stay the same? Won't it stay with me as long as I live?

He it is still and yet it is not he any longer. His features have become uncertain and faint, like a photographic plate from which two pictures have been taken. Even his voice sounds like ashes.

How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and it is now touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but from out of the night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it together.

It is as though formerly we were coins of different provinces; and now we are melted down, and all bear the same stamp.

Tantsitar on riides. Mantli ja kübaraga näeb ta täiesti võõras välja. Enne oli ta nõtke tiiger, nüüd jälle nagu kõik teisedki. On peaaegu uskumatu, et tal oli muutumiseks vaja vaid paar riidetükki selga tõmmata. Imelik, kuidas riided muudavad. Kui palju siis veel vormiriided.

Korraga valdab mind aja nimetu raskemeelsus - see voolab ja voolab ning muutub, ja kui sa naased, ei leia sa enam midagi taas. Hüvasti jätta on raske - kuid naasta on vahel veelgi raskem.

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 gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe.

While I was despairing and thinking everything was lost, it was quietly growing. I thought that parting was always final. Now I know that growing is a kind of parting. To grow means to leave something behind. And there is no end to it.

Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up - take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now

Once we had such desires - but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us.

And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to use we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not

This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly.

He it is still and yet it is not he any longer.

das verlorene Bereitsein meiner Jugend

ALREADY KNOW the camp on the moors. It was here that Himmelstoss gave Tjaden his education. But now I know hardly anyone here; as ever, all is altered. There are only a few people that I have occasionally met before. I go through the routine mechanically. In the evenings I generally

Für die Bäume ist es Frühjahr, sonst nichts. Alles andere geht sie nichts an.

K?das ir j?su domas par dz?vi? [Ludvigs jaut? z?rciniekam Vilkem] - No r?ta cit?das nek? vakar?, ziem? cit?das nek? vasar?, pirms ?šanas cit?das nek? p?c tam un jaun?b? droši vien cit?das nek? vecum?.

And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not.

The solicitor for whom he used to work in Cologne has written to tell him that women are now doing the work excellently and more cheaply, whereas Jupp, during his time in the army, will have grown out of office requirements, no doubt. He deeply regrets it, so he says; the times are hard. Best wishes for the future.

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.

And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do . . . it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man itself it is not. We could never regain the old intimacy with those scenes.