I see their dark forms, their beards move in the wind. I know nothing of them except that they are prisoners; and that is exactly what troubles me. Their life is obscure and guiltless; – if I could know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what are their burdens, then my emotion would have an object and might become sympathy. But as it is I perceive behind them only the suffering of the creature, the awful melancholy of life and the pitilessness of men.

— Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

And this is only one hospital, one 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. I.

— Erich Maria Remarque

We have almost grown accustomed to it; war is the cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery.

— Erich Maria Remarque

The anguish of solitude rises up in me. When Kat is taken away I will not have one friend left.

— Erich Maria Remarque

And yes, that’s it, that is what they think, those hundred thousand Kantoreks. Young men of iron. Young? None of us is more than twenty. But young? Young men? That was a long time ago. We are old now.

— Erich Maria Remarque

We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled – we are indifferent. We might exist there; but should we really live there? We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial – I believe we are lost.

— Erich Maria Remarque

The factory owners in Germany have grown wealthy; – dysentery dissolves our bowels.

— Erich Maria Remarque

The most beautiful city in the world is the one where you are happy.

— Erich Maria Remarque

I am conscious of the nameless sadness of Time that runs and runs on and changes, and when a man returns he shall find nothing again. – Yes, it is a hard thing to part; but to come back again, that is sometimes far harder.

— Erich Maria Remarque

All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving; it is driving us asunder.

— Erich Maria Remarque

My hands grow cold and my flesh creeps; and yet the night is warm. Only the mist is cold, this mysterious mist that trails over the dead and sucks from them their last, creeping life. By morning they will be pale and green and their blood congealed and black.

— Erich Maria Remarque

Nobody can deceive a dying farmer!

— Erich Maria Remarque

And we stand still again, and suddenly we feel that everything out there in front of us, that absolute hell, that ragged patch of shell-holes, is still there inside us.

— Erich Maria Remarque

Where do flies go in winter?

— Erich Maria Remarque

The misery of millions is too big a price to pay for the heroics of a few.

— Erich Maria Remarque

But Tjaden is quite fascinated. His otherwise prosy fancy is blowing bubbles. ‘But look,’ he announces, ‘I simply can’t believe that an emperor has to go to the latrine the same as I have.

— Erich Maria Remarque

Suddenly I realized that this was the beginning of a new life. But was it possible to start over again from scratch? To make myself at home in this new, unknown language? And, most frightening of all after all these years of fighting for survival, to learn once more how to live? And if I succeeded in coming back to life, would I not be betraying all my dead friends and loved ones?

— Erich Maria Remarque

Two years of rifle fire and hand grenades – you can’t just take it all off like a pair of socks afterwards -.

— Erich Maria Remarque

Because none can ever wholly feel what another suffers – is that the reason why wars perpetually recur?

— Erich Maria Remarque

I am aware that I, without realizing it, have lost my feelings – I don’t belong here anymore, I live in an alien world. I prefer to be left alone, not disturbed by anybody. They talk too much – I can’t relate to them – they are only busy with the superficial things.

— Erich Maria Remarque

The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy. Katczinsky said that was a result of their upbringing. It made them stupid. And what Kat said, he had thought about.

— Erich Maria Remarque
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