Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

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 The War." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5

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. It Is Impossible To Express Oneself In Any Other Way So Clearly And Pithily. Our Families And Our Teachers Will Be Shocked When We Go Home, But Here It Is The Universal Language.

We're No Longer Young Men. We've Lost Any Desire To Conquer The World. We Are Refugees. We Are Fleeing From Ourselves. From Our Lives. We Were Eighteen Years Old, And We Had Just Begun To Love The World And To Love Being In It; But We Had To Shoot At It. The First Shell To Land Went Straight For Our Hearts. We've Been Cut Off From Real Action, From Getting On, From Progress. We Don't Believe In Those Things Any More; We Believe In The War.

The Days, The Weeks, The Years Out Here Shall Come Back Again, And Our Dead Comrades Shall Then Stand Up Again And March With Us, Our Heads Shall Be Clear, We Shall Have A Purpose, And So We Shall March, Our Dead Comrades Beside Us, The Years At The Front Behind Us:—against Whom, Against Whom?

To No Man Does The Earth Mean So Much As To The Soldier. When He Presses Himself Down Upon Her Long And Powerfully, When He Buries His Face And His Limbs Deep In Her From The Fear Of Death By Shell-fire, Then She Is His Only Friend, His Brother, His Mother; He Stifles His Terror And His Cries In Her Silence And Her Security; She Shelters Him And Releases Him For Ten Seconds To Live, To Run, Ten Seconds Of Life; Receives Him Again And Again And Often Forever.

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 On Themselves. Whoever Survives The Country Wins. That Would Be Much Simpler And More Than Just This Arrangement, Where The Wrong People Do The Fighting

The Crowd, Still Shouting, Gives Way Before Us. We Plough Our Way Through. Women Hold Their Aprons Over Their Faces And Go Stumbling Away. A Roar Of Fury Goes Up. A Wounded Man Is Being Carried Off.

Monotonously The Lorries Sway, Monotonously Come The Calls, Monotonously Falls The Rain. It Falls On Our Heads And On The Heads Of The Dead Up The Line, On The Body Of The Little Recruit With The Wound That Is So Much Too Big For His Hip; It Falls On Kemmerich's Grave; It Falls In Our Hearts.

The Storm Lashes Us, Out Of The Confusion Of Grey And Yellow The Hail Of Splinters Whips Forth The Childlike Cries Of The Wounded, And In The Night Shattered Life Groans Painfully Into Silence. Our Hands Are Earth, Our Bodies Clay And Our Eyes Pools Of Rain. We Do Not Know Whether We Are Still Alive.

The Room Shall Speak, It Must Catch Me Up And Hold Me, I Want To Feel That I Belong Here, I Want To Hearken And Know When I Go Back To The Front Line That The War Will Sink Down, Be Drowned Utterly In The Great Home-coming Tide, Know That It Will Then Be Past For Ever, And Not Gnaw Us Continually, That It Will Have None But An Outward Power Over Us...nothing Stirs; Listless And Wretched, Like A Condemned Man, I Sit There And The Past Withdraws Itself. And At The Same Time I Fear To Importune It Too Much, Because I Do Not Know What Might Happen Then. I Am A Soldier, I Must Cling To That.

There Was Only The Broad Square With The Scattered Dim Moons Of The Street Lamps And With The Monumental Stone Arch Which Receded Into The Mist As Though It Would Prop Up The Melancholy Sky And Protect Beneath Itself The Faint Lonely Flame On The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, Which Looked Like The Last Grave Of Mankind In The Midst Of Night And Loneliness.

We Have Lost All Sense Of Other Considerations, Because They Are Artificial. Only The Facts Are Real And Important To Us. And Good Boots Are Hard To Come By." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2