Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

He wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with him. There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?

~ Erich Maria Remarque

And be very careful at the front, Paul.”Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Where would the world be if we took every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best- in a way that cost them nothing.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Then we change our possy and lie down again to play cards. We know how to do that: to play cards, to swear, and to fight. Not much for twenty years;--and yet too much for twenty years.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

And in the night you realize, when you wake out of a dream, overcome and captivated by the enchantment of visions that crowd in on each other, just how fragile a handhold, how tenuous a boundary separates us from darkness - we are little flames, inadequately sheltered by thin walls from the tempest of dissolution and insensibility in which we flicker and are often all but extinguished. Then the muted sounds of battle surrounds us, and we creep into ourselves and stare wide-eyed into the night.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

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

~ Erich Maria Remarque

we developed a firm, practical feeling of solidarity, which grew, on the battlefield, into the best thing that the war produced - comradeship in arms.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life

~ Erich Maria Remarque

If only they would not look at one so-What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man's thumb-in their eyes!

~ Erich Maria Remarque

There was always a screen behind which one could hide— a superior who in turn had his superior— orders, instructions, duties, commands— and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called— there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

What’s going on outside, Ravic?” “Nothing new, Kate. The world goes on eagerly preparing for suicide and at the same time deluding itself about what it’s doing.” “Will there be war?” “Everyone knows that there will be war. What one does not yet know is when. Everyone expects a miracle.” Ravic smiled. “Never before have I seen so many politicians who believe in miracles as at present in France and England. And never so few as in Germany.” She remained lying silent for a while. “To think that it should be possible—” she said then. “Yes— it seems so impossible that it will happen some day. Just because one considers it so impossible and doesn’t protect oneself against it.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

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.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Close behind us were our friends: Tjaden, a skinny locksmith of our own age, the biggest eater of the company. He sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way; Haie Westhus, of the same age, a peat-digger, who can easily hold a ration-loaf in his hand and say: Guess what I've got in my fist; then Detering, a peasant, who thinks of nothing but his farm-yard and his wife; and finally Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group, shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a grey subway;—it affects me as though it were my mother.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

The best way to lose a woman was to show her a kind of life that one could offer her for only a few days.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

One lost easiest what one held in one’s arms— never what one left.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Actually, what does man live for?” “To think about it. Any other question?” “Yes. Why does he die just when he has done that and has become a bit more sensible?” “Some people die without having become more sensible.” “Don’t evade my question. And don’t start talking about the transmigration of souls.” “I’ll ask you something else first. Lions kill antelopes; spiders flies; foxes chickens; which is the only race in the world that wars on itself uninterruptedly, fighting and killing one another?” “Those are questions for children. The crown of creation, of course, the human being— who invented the words love, kindness, and mercy.” “Good. And who is the only being in Nature that is capable of committing suicide and does it?” “Again the human being— who invented eternity, God, and resurrection.” “Excellent,” Ravic said. “You see of how many contradictions we consist. And you want to know why we die?

~ Erich Maria Remarque

You can deceive yourself with truth too. That's an even more dangerous dream.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

These memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow-- a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires-- but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us. They are completely lost to us. They arise no more; we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are a mysterious reflection, an apparition that haunts us, that we fear and love without hope. They are unattainable and we know it.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 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 memory; but the man himself it is not.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

the invisible storehouse in nothingness, called memory.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

There had never been any more between us thanchance had brought. But perhaps that makes a greater indebtednessand binds closer than much else

~ Erich Maria Remarque

I have awaited a storm that should deliver me, pluck me away and now it has come softly, even without my knowledge. But it is here. While I was despairing, thinking everything lost, it was already quietly growing. I had thought that division was always an end. Now I know that growth also is division. And growth means relinquishing. And growth has no end.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

A man has to have something he can put faith in.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

He looked around. The room, a few suitcases, some belongings, a handful of well-read books— a man needed few things to live. And it was good not to get used to many things when life was unsettled. Again and again one had to abandon them or they were taken away. One should be ready to leave every day. That was the reason he had lived alone— when one was on the move one should not have anything that could bind one. Nothing that could stir the heart. The adventure— but nothing more.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

There is no guilt in feelings ever.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

...and without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Actually, what does man live for?”“To think about it. Any other question?” “Yes. Why does he die just when he has done that and has become a bit more sensible?” “Some people die without having become more sensible.”“Don’t evade my question. And don’t start talking about the transmigration of souls.” “I’ll ask you something else first. Lions kill antelopes; spiders flies; foxes chickens; which is the only race in the world that wars on itself uninterruptedly, fighting and killing one another?” “Those are questions for children. The crown of creation, of course, the human being— who invented the words love, kindness, and mercy.” “Good. And who is the only being in Nature that is capable of committing suicide and does it?” “Again the human being— who invented eternity, God, and resurrection.”“Excellent,” Ravic said. “You see of how many contradictions we consist. And you want to know why we die?

~ Erich Maria Remarque

The story of the herd of seals. Hundreds of them on a beach; among them the hunter killing one after the other with a club. Together they could easily have crushed him— but they lay there, watching him come to murder, and did not move; he was only killing a neighbor— one neighbor after the other. The story of the European seals. The sunset of civilization. Tired shapeless Götterdämmerung. The empty banners of human rights. The sell-out of a continent. The onrushing deluge. The haggling for the last prices. The old dance of despair on the volcano. Peoples again slowly being driven into a slaughterhouse. The fleas would save themselves when the sheep were being sacrificed. As always.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

One always expects something else.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love!

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Sweet words. Gentle deceptive balm. Help, love, to belong together, to come back again— words, sweet words. Nothing but words. How many words existed for this simple, wild, cruel attraction of two bodies! What a rainbow of imagination, lies, sentiment, and self-deception enclosed it!

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!

~ Erich Maria Remarque

My healthy blood was powerless to cure the sick blood of my beloved. That was beyond understanding. And so is death.

~ Erich Maria Remarque