Top 400 Erich Maria Remarque Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The trucks roll monotonously onwards, the shouts are monotonous, the falling rain is monotonous. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead men up at the front of the truck, on the body of the little recruit with a wound that is far too big for his hip, it’s falling on Kemmerich’s grave, and it’s falling in our hearts.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

102. “What is leave? – A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse. Already the sense of parting begins to intrude itself. My mother watches me silently; I know she counts the days; every morning she is sad. It is one day less. She has put away my pack, she does not want to be reminded by it.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

103. “Then we change our possy and lie down again to play cards. We know how to do that: to play cards, to swear, and to fight. Not much for twenty years; – and yet too much for twenty years.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

104. “In this way the squad has merely made the turn-about and a couple of paces, while the squad-leader dashes backwards and forwards like a fart on a curtain-pole.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

105. “In himself man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread with a little decorum.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

106. “Beside us lies a fair-headed recruit in utter terror. He has buried his face in his hands, his helmet has fallen off. I fish hold of it and try to put it back on his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet off and like a child creeps under my arm, his head close to my breast. The little shoulders heave. Shoulders just like Kemmerich’s. I let him be.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

107. “We don’t act like that because we are in good humor; we are in a good humor because otherwise we should go to pieces.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

108. “No one would believe that in this howling waste there could still be men; but steel helmets now appear on all sides out of the trench, and fifty yards from us a machine-gun is already in position and barking. The wire entanglements are torn to pieces. Yet they offer some obstacle. We see the storm-troops coming. Our artillery opens fire. Machine-guns rattle, rifles crack.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

109. “Comrade, I say to the dead man, but I say it calmly, today you tomorrow me, but if I come out of it, comrade, I will fight against this, that has struck us both down; from you taken life-and from me-? Life also. I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen again.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

110. “Regret is the most useless thing in the world. One cannot recall anything. And one cannot rectify anything. Otherwise we would all be saints. Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

111. “The screaming of the beasts becomes louder. One can no longer distinguish whence in this now quiet silvery landscape it comes; ghostly, invisible, it is everywhere, between heaven and earth it rolls on immeasurably.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

112. “It’s all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don’t act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

113. “I glance at my boots. They are big and clumsy, the breeches are tucked into them, and standing up one looks well-built and powerful in these great drainpipes. But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

114. “Erst das Lazarett zeigt, was der Krieg ist.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

115. “We are not, indeed, in the front-line, but only in the reserves, yet in every face can be read: This is the front, now we are within its embrace.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

116. “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

117. “We have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

118. “Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child – why can I not put my head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and self-controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang short, boy’s trouser – it is such a little time ago, why is it over?”

— Erich Maria Remarque

119. “By day Lisbon has a naive theatrical quality that enchants and captivates, but by night it is a fairy-tale city, descending over lighted terraces to the sea, like a woman in festive garments going down to meet her dark lover.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

120. “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

121. “Things become quieter, but the cries do not cease. “What’s up, Albert?” I ask. “A couple of columns over there got it in the neck.” The cries continued. It is not men, they could not cry so terribly. “Wounded horses,” says Kat. It’s unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

122. “Jugend! Wir sind alle nicht mehr als zwanzig Jahre. Aber jung? Jugend? Das ist lange her. Wir sind alte Leute.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

123. “The war has ruined us for everything.” 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 the war. The.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

124. “I think it’s more a kind of fever,’ says Albert. ‘Nobody really wants it, but all of a sudden, there it is. We didn’t want the war, they say the same thing on the other side – and in spite of that, half the world is at it hammer and tongs.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

125. “When it is fairly quiet we can hear the transports behind the enemy lines rolling ceaselessly until dawn. Kat says that they do not go back but are bringing up troops – troops, munitions, and guns.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

126. “Our life alternates between billets and the front. We have almost grown accustomed to it; war is the cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

127. “Tjaden comes back. He is still worked up and joins in the debate again straight away by asking how a war starts in the first place. ‘Usually when one country insults another one badly,’ answers Kropp, a little patronizingly. But Tjaden isn’t going to be put off. ‘A country? I don’t get it. A German mountain can’t insult a French mountain, or a river, or a forest, or a cornfield.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

128. “Here lies our comrade, Kemmerich, who a little while ago was roasting horse flesh with us and squatting in the shell-holes. He it is still and yet it is not he any longer. His features have become uncertain and faint, like a photographic plate from which two pictures have been taken. Even his voice sounds like ashes.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

129. “Cautiously, the mouth applied to the valve, I breathe. The gas still creeps over the ground and sinks into all hollows. Like a big, soft jellyfish it floats into our shell-hole and lolls there obscenely.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

130. “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

131. “While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

132. “While they went on writing and making speeches, we saw field hospitals and men dying: while they preached the service of the state as the greatest thing, we already knew that the fear of death is even greater.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

133. “Beyond this our life did not extend. And of this nothing remains.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

134. “I felt the sombre grief, that had sunk down in me like a stone, begin to be lapped about by a wild hope, change and in some strange way mingle with hope; the one became the other; the grief, the hope, the wind, the evening, and the beautiful girl between the shining mirror and the lights; yes, for a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real and profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness even – love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

135. “No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

136. “It’s funny how much of the miseries of this world are caused by short people –they are so much more quick-tempered and difficult to get on than the tall ones.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

137. “Don’t ask about the consequences if you want to do something. Otherwise you’ll never do it.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

138. “Detering walks about cursing. ‘What have they done to deserve that, that’s what I want to know?’ And later on he comes back to it again. His voice is agitated and he sounds as if he is making a speech when he says, ‘I tell you this: it is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

139. “We agree that it’s the same for everyone; not only for us here, but everywhere, for everyone who is of our age; to some more, and to others less. It is the common fate of our generation.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

140. “A miracle is never perfect when it happens, there are always little disappointments. But once it’s gone for good and nothing can change it, memory could make it perfect and then it would never change. If I can just call it to life now, won’t it always stay the same? Won’t it stay with me as long as I live?”

— Erich Maria Remarque

141. “Those who consider themselves fair, are particularly ruthless.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

142. “To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and again and often forever.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

143. “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

144. “My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

145. “If only they would not look at one so-What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man’s thumb-in their eyes!”

— Erich Maria Remarque

146. “An hour passes. I sit tensely and watch his every movement in case he may perhaps say something. What if he were to open his mouth and cry out! But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not speak of his mother or his brothers and sisters. He says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

147. “The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

148. “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

149. “Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war if only one could get a little more sleep.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

150. “We live in rooms too much, I say. We think too much in rooms. We make love too much in rooms. We despair too much in rooms. Can you despair in the open?”

— Erich Maria Remarque