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Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

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Famous Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

“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.”

MenMeanLongDoeRunningEarthFacesMotherSilenceForeverFireSecurityCryBrotherTenPressesSoldierTerrorReleaseSecondsShelterAgain And AgainShellsLimbsFear Of Death
Book:All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel
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“One often feels as though something had happened before, I remember. It comes quite close to you and stands there and you know it was just this way once before, exactly so; for an instant you almost know how it must go on, but then it disappears as you try to lay hold of it like smoke or a dead memory. "We could never remember, Isabelle," I say. "It's like the rain. That has also become one, out of two gasses, oxygen and hydrogen, which no longer remember they were once gasses. Now they are only rain and have no memory of an earlier time.”

KnowsWayFeelsTryingTwoRememberMemoriesKnow HowHappenedGoes OnRainLaysDisappearSmokeInstantOxygenHydrogenNo Memory
Author:Erich Maria Remarque
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“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”

PeopleShouldKindTwoWarCountryHandsWould BeFightingWinningBandClubsMinistersThinkerTicketsArrangementsDeclarationArenaFestivalsBullsProposeEntrancesDrawersBathingTwo CountriesDeclaration Of War
Book:All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel
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“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.”

LongStillsEndsWholeEarthFacesSleepSawsFrontsExpressionQuietArmyLaysWesternCalmSentencesGladFallenReportsConfinedOctoberSingle Sentence
Author:Erich Maria Remarque
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“In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out.”

IfsMenGivingImportantWarHandsUsedForceBehindsCasesWeaponsToolsSticksBlowStrikesShouldersUsed To BeKicksNecksGutsChestsUsualSplitsChinsLightersGreat WarSpadesVersatileGrenadeBayonets
Author:Erich Maria Remarque
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“The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.”

KnowsStillsWarBodyHandsEyeEarthNightSilenceAliveCryRainStormConfusionYellowPoolWoundedGreyClayShatteredWhipsChildlikeHailGreat WarLashesSplinters
Book:All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel
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“The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express oneself in any other way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language.”

MenWayGivingWellsHomeJoyThreeLanguageTermTeacherImpossibleExpressionUniversalSoldierOneselfOur FamilyIntimateRegionsStomachQuartersShockedVocabularyIndignationUniversal LanguageFlavourIntestines
Book:All quiet on the western front and related readings
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“The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us...Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that.”

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Author:Erich Maria Remarque
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