All Quiet on the Western Front Quotes

“Kat turns his eyes to heaven, lets off a mighty fart, and says meditatively: Every little bean must be heard as well as seen.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“The war has ruined us for
everything.”
― 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 scarce.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Ein Befehl hat diese stillen Gestalten zu unsern Feinden gemacht; ein Befehl könnte sie in unsere Freunde verwandeln. An irgendeinem Tisch wird ein Schriftstück von einigen Leuten unterzeichnet, die keiner von uns kennt, und jahrelang ist unser höchstes Ziel das, worauf sonst die Verachtung der Welt und ihre höchste Strafe ruht.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“I know nothing
about them except that they are prisoners-of-war, and that is precisely what
shakes me. Their lives are anonymous and blameless; if I knew more about
them, what they are called, how they live, what their hopes and fears are,
then my feelings might have a focus and could turn into sympathy. But at the
moment all I sense in them is the pain of the dumb animal, the fearful
melancholy of life and the pitilessness of men.

- Paul Buemer”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby battledress, roasting a goose in the middle of the night. We don’t talk much, but we have a greater and more gentle consideration for each other than I should think even lovers do. We are two human beings, two tiny sparks of life; outside there is just the night, and all around us, death.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“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. 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. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“But by far the most important result was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of esprit de corps, which in the field developed into the finest thing that arose out of the war—comradeship.”
― Wayne Vansant, All Quiet on the Western Front

“With our young, awakened eyes we saw that the classical conception of the Fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants—salutes, springing to attention, parade-marches, presenting arms, right wheel, left wheel, clicking the heels, insults, and a thousand pettifogging details. We had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed ourselves to it. We learned in fact that some of these things were necessary, but the rest merely show. Soldiers have a fine nose for such distinctions.”
― Wayne Vansant, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Kantorek would say that we stood on the threshold of life. And so it would seem. We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away. For the others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the end may be.”
― Wayne Vansant, All Quiet on the Western Front

“While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger”
― Wayne Vansant, All Quiet on the Western Front