Top 400 Erich Maria Remarque Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Wenn man so viele Tote gesehen hat, kann man so viel Schmerz um einen einzigen nicht mehr recht begreifen.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

302. “It is when one is alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

303. “They are many indeed that lie there, though until now we have not thought of it so. Hitherto we have just all remained there together, they in the graves, we in the trenches, divided only by a few handfuls of earth. They were but a little before us; daily we became less and they more, and often we have not known whether we already belonged to them or not.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

304. “Her mouth speaks words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

305. “It is as though formerly we were coins of different provinces; and now we are melted down, and all bear the same stamp.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

306. “Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. 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

307. “There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?”

— Erich Maria Remarque

308. “Our first experience of heavy artillery fire showed us our mistake, and the view of life that their teaching had given us fell to pieces under that bombardment.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

309. “We have never been a very demonstrative family – poor people who have to work hard and cope with problems very rarely are.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

310. “Our knowledge of life is limited to death.” – Paul Baumer.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

311. “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

312. “Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the army.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

313. “This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

314. “It was not the first time I had caught her so. She used to come to us for two hours every morning to clean up the workshop; and though one might leave as much money lying around as one liked she would never disturb it – but schnapps she could smell out as far off as a rat a slice of bacon.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

315. “They used to tie us to a tree, but that is forbidden now. In many ways we are treated quite like men. An.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

316. “The solicitor for whom he used to work in Cologne has written to tell him that women are now doing the work excellently and more cheaply, whereas Jupp, during his time in the army, will have grown out of office requirements, no doubt. He deeply regrets it, so he says; the times are hard. Best wishes for the future.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

317. “They are not really thoughts; they are memories that come to torment me in my weakness and put me into a strange mood. Up go.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

318. “ALREADY KNOW the camp on the moors. It was here that Himmelstoss gave Tjaden his education. But now I know hardly anyone here; as ever, all is altered. There are only a few people that I have occasionally met before. I go through the routine mechanically. In the evenings I generally.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

319. “That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting. The subject.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

320. “Life was something too great, and death also had something too great about it; they were not to be played with. Having courage was a different thing from having no fear; courage was consciousness of danger, fearlessness mere ignorance.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

321. “Memory is a deadly disease for a refugee; it’s his cancer of the soul.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

322. “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

323. “Habit is the explanation of why we seem to forget things so quickly.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

325. “The cries continued, it is not men, they could not cry so terribly. ‘Wounded horses’, says Kat. It is is unendurable, it is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror and groaning.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

326. “It cannot be that it has gone, the yearning that made our blood unquiet, the unknown, the perplexing, the incoming things, the thousand faces of the future, the melodies from dreams and from books, the whispers and divination of women; it cannot be that this has vanished in bombardment, in despair, in brothels.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

327. “Man lives, you’re right! Whoever seeks further is already lost.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

328. “Today we have done an hour’s saluting drill because Tjaden failed to salute a major smartly enough. Kat can’t get it out of his head. “You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well,” he says. Kropp.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

329. “Modern trench-warfare demands knowledge and experience; a man must have a feeling for the contours of the ground, an ear for the sound and character of the shells, must be able to decide beforehand where they will drop, how they will burst, and how to shelter from them.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

330. “What ever came of the good scholars in the world? – In the hothouse of the school they do enjoy a short semblance of life, but only the more surely to sink back afterward into mediocrity and insignificance. The world has been bettered only by the bad scholars.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

331. “Even a soldier’s behind likes to sit soft.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

332. “You do, Bob. You have the requirements for it. A certain simplicity is necessary for love. You have it. Keep it. It is a gift of God. Never to be gotten again once it is lost.” “Don’t take it to heart too much, though, Baby,” said Lenz with a grin. “It’s no shame to be born stupid. Only to die stupid.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

333. “It’s odd,’ she murmured, ’but as long as we don’t forget that we’re falling and falling, nothing is lost. Life seems to love paradoxes – when we think we’re perfectly safe, we’re always ridiculous and on the verge of a tumble; but when we know we’re lost, life showers gifts on us. Then we don’t have to do a thing – it runs after us like a poodle.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

334. “For a moment I held her hand in mine and felt her warm, dry pressure. Then I went out to get the rum. The night stood big and silent about the little house. The leather seats of our car were moist. I stood and looked toward the horizon where the red glow of the city rose against the sky. I would gladly have stayed out there; but already I could hear Lenz calling.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

335. “She let herself drift; the crowd sustained her and did not shock her; she loved it because it was life, unknown, thoughtless, foolish life devoted to the thoughtless and foolish goals which bobbed on its surface like colored buoys on a choppy sea.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

336. “While I was despairing and thinking everything was lost, it was quietly growing. I thought that parting was always final. Now I know that growing is a kind of parting. To grow means to leave something behind. And there is no end to it.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

337. “The noises from outside all merge into one another, become a dream which disappears from the waking memory... he sees the woods and stars behind him, and so he moves on, an ordinary soldier, with his big boots and his webbing and his pack, making his tiny way under the sky’s great vault along the road that lies before him; a soldier who forgets things quickly and who isn’t even depressed much any more, but who just goes onwards under the great night sky.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

338. “We stand and gaze. The farmhouse, the remnants of the wood, the heights, the trenches on the sky yonder, – it had been a terrible world and life a burden. Now it is over and will stay behind here; when we set out, it will drop behind us, step by step, and in an hour be gone as if it had never been. – Who can realize it?”

— Erich Maria Remarque

339. “He had collapsed like a rotten tree.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

341. “We are all curious. “But why did you say you did it? It wasn’t you at all.” He grins. “That doesn’t matter. I have a shooting license.” Then of course, we all understand. Whoever has a shooting license can do just whatever he pleases. “Yes,” he explains. “I got a crack in the head and they presented me with a certificate to say that I was periodically not responsible for my actions. Ever since then I’ve had a grand time. No one dares to annoy me. And nobody does anything to me.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

342. “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

343. “It keeps them going, staves off the evil day when they will be alone. And to be alone, really alone, without illusion, that way lies madness – and suicide.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

344. “It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down?”

— Erich Maria Remarque

345. “The blonde girl twitters: “Bread – good – –.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

346. “The dark turns into madness. It rocks and rages. Dark things, darker than the night itself, rush upon us in great waves, over us and onwards.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

347. “But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

348. “Don’t ask anything more. There are more secrets in your hair than in a thousand questions.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

349. “It keeps bobbing back disconcertingly, and then you are confronted by irreconcilable contrast: the skies of childhood and the science of killing, lost youth and the cynicism of knowledge gained too young.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

350. “Safe in his cage,′ she repeated. ‘Who wants to be safe in a cage?”

— Erich Maria Remarque