We Are Little Flames Poorly Sheltered By

Modesty And Conscientiousness Receive Their Reward Only In Novels. In Life They Are Exploited And Then Shoved Aside.

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.

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 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

I Am Young, I Am Twenty Years Old; Yet I Know Nothing Of Life But Despair, Death, Fear, And Fatuous Superficiality Cast Over An Abyss Of Sorrow. I See How Peoples Are Set Against One Another, And In Silence, Unknowingly, Foolishly, Obediently, Innocently Slay One Another.