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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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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
Melancholy
Desires
Secret
Desire
Reality
Never
Arouse
Satisfy

More quotes by 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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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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Good or ill, life is life you only realize that when you have to risk it.
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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A hospital alone shows what war is.
Erich Maria Remarque
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-Why does a man live? -In order to think about it.
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
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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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The war has ruined us for everything.
Erich Maria Remarque
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Courage is the fairest adornment of youth.
Erich Maria Remarque
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We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us. And good boots are hard to come by. - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2
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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We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will but they did everything to knock that out of us.
Erich Maria Remarque
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We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers - we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.
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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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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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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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