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The things men did or felt they had to do.

Erich Maria Remarque

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Erich Maria Remarque
Age: 72 †
Born: 1898
Born: June 22
Died: 1970
Died: September 25
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Erich Paul Remark
Erich Maria Remark
Felt
Things
Men

More quotes by Erich Maria Remarque

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It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.
Erich Maria Remarque
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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
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(Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn.
Erich Maria Remarque
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I wandered through the streets thinking of all the things I might have said and might have done had I been other than I was.
Erich Maria Remarque
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It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.
Erich Maria Remarque
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We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.
Erich Maria Remarque
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The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.
Erich Maria Remarque
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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.
Erich Maria Remarque
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We want to live at any price so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace-time, would be out of place here.
Erich Maria Remarque
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To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.
Erich Maria Remarque
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On the steps is a machine-gun ready for action. The square is empty only the streets that lead into it are jammed with people. It would be madness to go farther - the machine-gun is covering the square.
Erich Maria Remarque
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For a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real, profound sense, is life and perhaps happiness even - love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge.
Erich Maria Remarque
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It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.
Erich Maria Remarque
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I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the darkness--I belong to them and they to me we all share the same fear and the same life...I could bury my face in them, in these voices, these words that have saved me and will stand by me.
Erich Maria Remarque
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How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
Erich Maria Remarque
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... but that's what mankind is like: they only prize what they no longer possess.
Erich Maria Remarque
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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, Ch. 5
Erich Maria Remarque
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The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off.
Erich Maria Remarque
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Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay/And the war would be over and done in a day. - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3
Erich Maria Remarque
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You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal—no one will see it. But when a button is missing—everyone sees that.
Erich Maria Remarque