All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. 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.

The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us, Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall. It is this Chance that makes us indifferent.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down—now,

We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill.

It was not any recognition of their beauty and their significance that attracted us, but the communion, the feeling of a comradeship with the things and events of our existence, which cut us off and made the world of our parents a thing incomprehensible to us—for then we surrendered ourselves to events and were lost in them, and the least little thing was enough to carry us down the stream of eternity. Perhaps it was only the privilege of our youth, but as yet we recognized no limits and saw nowhere an end. We had that thrill of expectation in the blood which united us with the course of our days.

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.