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Quotes from All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque

1898–1970 Germany

← All quotes by Erich Maria Remarque

11 quotes

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

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

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

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

A hospital alone shows what war is.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers — we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is often brought on by small men. They are so much more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

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.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Erich Maria Remarque (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.