Top 400 Erich Maria Remarque Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “Doesn’t this make you sad, Ferdinand?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Cynical, if you like. One is sad when one thinks about life – cynical when one sees what people make of it.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

303. “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

304. “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

305. “There is the great sky again, and the stars, and the first streak of dawn, and he is walking beneath that sky, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

306. “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

307. “Wenn man so viele Tote gesehen hat, kann man so viel Schmerz um einen einzigen nicht mehr recht begreifen.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

314. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

319. “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

320. “Where would the world be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best – in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

321. “And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

322. “So long as I do not know his name perhaps I may still forget him, time will obliterate it, this picture. But his name, it is a nail that will be hammered into me and never come out again. It has the power to recall this forever, it will always come back and stand before me.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

323. “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

324. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

330. “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

331. “We all feed on one another. Such occasional little sparks of kindliness – that’s something one shouldn’t allow to be taken away. It strengthens one for a difficult life.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

332. “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

333. “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

334. “Geriau mirti tada, kai dar nori gyventi, negu tada, kai jau nori mirti.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

336. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

338. “In the afternoon, about three, he is dead. I.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

339. “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

340. “I loved her very much, and it seemed to me that I had never loved her more, even when possessing her, than in this sordid night full of snoring, punctured by the strange hissing sound of urine falling on coal.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

341. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

343. “I hadn’t failed, I had gained a second, heaven-sent life with Helen – and even the despair that had come to me and still haunted my sleep from time to time was possible only because there had been something else: Paris, Helen, and the unbelievable feeling of not being alone.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

344. “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so still and quiet along the entire front line that the army dispatches restricted themselves to a single sentence: that there was nothing new to report on the western front.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

345. “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

346. “And now we realize what is expected – the Americans want to exchange. It is apparent that they have not long been in the war; they are still collecting souvenirs, shoulder straps, badges, belt buckles, decorations, uniform buttons. In exchange we stock ourselves with soap, cigarettes, chocolate and tinned meat. They even want us to take a handful of money for our dog – but we draw the line there; let them offer what they will, the dog stays with us.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

348. “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

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

— Erich Maria Remarque

350. “We stroll on. Late in the evening we run into Willy and set off together for the barracks. En route Willy suddenly springs to one side and I crouch down likewise. The unmistakable howl of a shell coming – then we look round mystified and laugh. It was merely the screech of an electric tram.”

— Erich Maria Remarque