"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

""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"
— Erich Maria Remarque

"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 9
"
— Erich Maria Remarque

"You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal—no one will see it. But when a button is missing—everyone sees that."
— Erich Maria Remarque

""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."
-All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 10"
— Erich Maria Remarque

""Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay/And the war would be over and done in a day."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3"
— Erich Maria Remarque

"We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"I had the feeling of slipping down a smooth bottomless pit. It had nothing to do with Breuer and the people. It had nothing to do with Pat even. It was the melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them; that love begins with a human being but does not end in him; and that everything can be there: a human being, love, happiness, life — and that yet in some terrible way it is always too little, and grows ever less the more it seems."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Three Comrades)

""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"
— Erich Maria Remarque

"The things men did or felt they had to do."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, a single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

""Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without."
"
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"I did not want to think so much about her. I wanted to take her as an unexpected, delightful gift, that had come and would go again — nothing more. I meant not to give room to the thought that it could ever be more. I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Three Comrades)

"Little by little things began to assume a new aspect. The sense of insecurity vanished, words came of themselves, I was no longer so painfully conscious of everything I said. I drank on and felt the great soft wave approach and embrace me; the dark hour began to fill with pictures and stealthily the noiseless procession of dreams appeared again superimposed on the dreary, grey landscape of existence."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Three Comrades)

"How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"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 (Three Comrades)

"- Смятате, че не си подхождаме? Правилно. Ала хората, които са родени един за друг, по-лесно могат да се разделят. Също като тенджерата и похлупака, направени по мярка - те се отделят без трудност. Но ако капакът не отговаря на тенджерата и трябва да се набие с чук в нея, то при опит да ги отделиш - много лесно нещо може да се счупи."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Shadows in Paradise)

"For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress -- to the future."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"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."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Arch of Triumph)

"Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us."
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

""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"
— Erich Maria Remarque

""We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 6"
— Erich Maria Remarque

""Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without."
-All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 11"
— Erich Maria Remarque

"Jetzt sehe ich erst, daß du ein Mensch bist wie ich. Ich habe gedacht an diene Handgranaten, an dein Bajonett und diene Waffen; - jetzt sehe ich diene Frau und dien Gesicht und das Gemeinsame. Vergib mir, Kamerad! Wir sehen es immer zu spät. Warum sagt man uns nicht immer wieder, daß ihr ebenso arme Hunde seid wie wir, daß eure Mütter sich ebenso ängstigen wie unsere und daß wir die gleiche Furcht vor dem Tode haben und das gleiche Sterben und den gleichen Schmerz. - Vergib mir, Kamerad, wie konntest du mein Feind sein? Wenn wir diese Waffen und diese Unifrom fortwerfen, könntest du ebenso mein Bruder sein wir Kat und Albert. Nimm zwanzig Jahre von mir, Kamerad, und stehe auf - nimm mehr, denn ich weiß nicht, was ich damit noch beginnen soll.""
— Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)

"Ljubav nije jezero u kome se uvek može ogledati... ona ima plimu i oseku i olupine i potonule gradove i bure i kovčege sa zlatom i bisere… ali biseri su duboko..."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Arch of Triumph)

"I felt the first soft glow of intoxication that makes the blood warmer and spreads an illusion of adventure over uncertainty."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Three Comrades)

"Бети се замисли за миг. След това ми направи знак да се приближа. Аз пристъпих неохотно, защото от нея се носеше мирис на ментови таблетки и смърт."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Shadows in Paradise)

"Тя отпъди с усилие птиците.
- Къш, Патирк! Къш, Емили! Ето, вече ме изцапаха!
- Хубаво е когато можем да назовем причината за нещасието си по име, нали? -забелязах аз. - Тогава всичко е много по-просто.
Запътих се към своя форд, ала внезапно спрях. Какво казах? За секунда ми се стори, че някой ме прободе отзад. Извърнах се.
- Не е толкова страшно. - чух гласа на Кармен от градината. - Петното може да се изчисти."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Shadows in Paradise)

"That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Three Comrades)

"Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Three Comrades)

"(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."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Arch of Triumph)

"После отново чух гласа на оня ухаещ на парфюм веселяк, който ми обясняваше, че не сега, а след време, когато ще го моля коленопреклонно, ще ме изгори жив, и ми разказваше какво ще стане с очите ми."
— Erich Maria Remarque (Schatten im Paradies)