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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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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
Possess
Prize
Mankind
Longer
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More quotes by 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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It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.
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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The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it
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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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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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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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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... clothes sometimes gave one more of a lift than any philosophic comforting.
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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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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Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!
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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(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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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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The war has ruined us for everything.
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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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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-Why does a man live? -In order to think about it.
Erich Maria Remarque
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Every little bean must be heard as well as seen!
Erich Maria Remarque