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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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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
Life
Progress
Hearts
Eighteen
World
War
Fronts
Striving
Firsts
Front
Bomb
First
Activity
Begun
Heart
Quiet
Bombs
Believe
Cutting
Shoot
Explosion
Things
Pieces
Strive
Explosions
Love
Longer
Western
Burst

More quotes by Erich Maria Remarque

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The war has ruined us for everything.
Erich Maria Remarque
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Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.
Erich Maria Remarque
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A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.
Erich Maria Remarque
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We were all at once terribly alone and alone we must see it through.
Erich Maria Remarque
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Come let me kiss you. Life was never so precious as today— when it meant so little.
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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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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Good or ill, life is life you only realize that when you have to risk it.
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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I, too, am going to go away soon,' she says, 'I am weary and weary of my weariness. Everything is beginning to be a little empty and full of leave-taking and melancholy and waiting.
Erich Maria Remarque
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Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.
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.
Erich Maria Remarque
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A hospital alone shows what war is.
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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I felt the first soft glow of intoxication that makes the blood warmer and spreads an illusion of adventure over uncertainty.
Erich Maria Remarque
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My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be.
Erich Maria Remarque
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For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress -- to the future.
Erich Maria Remarque
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No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect.
Erich Maria Remarque
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What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love!
Erich Maria Remarque
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You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well.
Erich Maria Remarque