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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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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
News
Arranging
Pieces
Dances
Lines
Humour
Almost
Troops
War
Otherwise
Good
Fronts
Like
Front
Line

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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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Mirrors are there when we are and yet they never give anything back to us but our own image. Never, never shall we know what they are when they are alone or what is behind them.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know 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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Courage is the fairest adornment of youth.
Erich Maria Remarque
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It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hour's bombardment unscratched. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
Erich Maria Remarque
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The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it
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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What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love!
Erich Maria Remarque