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.

What__ going on outside, Ravic?_ __othing new, Kate. The world goes on eagerly preparing for suicide and at the same time deluding itself about what it__ doing._ __ill there be war?_ __veryone knows that there will be war. What one does not yet know is when. Everyone expects a miracle._ Ravic smiled. __ever before have I seen so many politicians who believe in miracles as at present in France and England. And never so few as in Germany._ She remained lying silent for a while. __o think that it should be possible__ she said then. __es_ it seems so impossible that it will happen some day. Just because one considers it so impossible and doesn__ protect oneself against it.

Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me "dear boy," it means much more than when another uses it.

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting

When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind.

The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.

There was always a screen behind which one could hide_ a superior who in turn had his superior_ orders, instructions, duties, commands_ and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called_ there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.

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!

Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We're living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

we developed a firm, practical feeling of solidarity, which grew, on the battlefield, into the best thing that the war produced - comradeship in arms.

And in the night you realize, when you wake out of a dream, overcome and captivated by the enchantment of visions that crowd in on each other, just how fragile a handhold, how tenuous a boundary separates us from darkness - we are little flames, inadequately sheltered by thin walls from the tempest of dissolution and insensibility in which we flicker and are often all but extinguished. Then the muted sounds of battle surrounds us, and we creep into ourselves and stare wide-eyed into the night.

our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life

The tension has worn us out. It is a deadly tension that feels as if a jagged knife blade is being scraped along the spine. Our legs won't function, our hands are trembling and our bodies are like thin membranes stretched over barely repressed madness, holding in what would otherwise be an unrestrained outburst of endless scream.s. We have no flesh, no muscle now

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.

Where would the world be if we took 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 be very careful at the front, Paul.__h, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!