All Quiet on the Western Front Quotes

“He is right. 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 war.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“They talk too much for me. They have worries, aims, desires, that I cannot comprehend. I often sit with one of them in the little beer garden and try to explain to him that this is really the only thing: just to sit quietly, like this. They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words, yes, that is it--they feel it, but always with only half of themselves, the rest of their being is taken up with other things, they are so divided in themselves that none feels it with his whole essence; I cannot even say myself exactly what I mean.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Yes, I think bitterly, that's how it is with us, and with all poor people. They don't dare to ask the price, but worry themselves dreadfully beforehand about it; but the others, for whom it is not important, they settle the price first as a matter of course.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“(…) we were being trained to be heroes the way they train circus horses, and we quickly got used to it.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“But every gasp strips my heart bare. The dying man is the master of these hours, he has an invisible dagger to stab me with: the dagger of time and my thoughts.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Continuous Fire, defensive fire, curtain fire, trench mortars, gas tanks, machine-guns, hand grenades - words, words, but they embrace all the horrors of the world.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“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?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and to say to him: "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lives in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. 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? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother just ike Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up --- take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now.”
― 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.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“То си идва от само себе си, защото човекът е преди всичко звяр и само отгоре, като филия с мас, е намазан с малко човещина.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: “That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn’t want to die. Let him not die!”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Leer inleyerek kolunun üzerine yaslanıyor. Öyle bir kanıyor ki elimizden gelen yok. Boşalan bir tüp gibi, birkaç dakika içinde çöküverdi. Okulda, matematikte birinci oluşunun şimdi ona ne yararı var ki?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapable into itself.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Dear boy," says my mother softly.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me "dear boy," it means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months, and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that she gives me too. She must have got them cheap some time and put them all by for me.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“We find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Every full grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world's condemnation and severest penalty fell, becomes our highest aim. But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles' beards. Any noncommissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“I nod and wonder what to say to encourage him. His lips have fallen away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth stick out and look as though they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the forehead bulges more prominently, the cheekbones protrude. The skeleton is working itself through. The eyes are already sunken in. In a couple of hours it will be over.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“He had sunk forwards and was lying on the ground as if asleep. When they turned him over, you could see that he had not suffered long, his face wore an expression that was so composed that it looked as if he were almost happy that it had turned out this way.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front