All Quiet on the Western Front Quotes

“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