We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. Erich Maria Remarque More Quotes by Erich Maria Remarque More Quotes From Erich Maria Remarque 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 buttons criminals missing They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades. Erich Maria Remarque comrade voice comforting Nothing is the mirror in which you see the world. Erich Maria Remarque mirrors world Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death. Erich Maria Remarque calling years firsts 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 war lying blood Our knowledge of life is limited to death Erich Maria Remarque life-is Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain. Erich Maria Remarque brain 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 luck soldier believe Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without. Erich Maria Remarque clay fields fire And even if these scenes from our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not. Erich Maria Remarque men memories moving It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them. Erich Maria Remarque secret desire reality Trenches, hospitals, the common grave--there are no other possibilities. Erich Maria Remarque possibility graves common ... clothes sometimes gave one more of a lift than any philosophic comforting. Erich Maria Remarque clothes comforting sometimes At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs. Erich Maria Remarque fire rain school The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. Erich Maria Remarque mind quiet ideas Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone. Erich Maria Remarque impatience filled gone My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be. Erich Maria Remarque shame ought rage 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 stand-by-me voice darkness We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. Erich Maria Remarque love-life pieces world One often feels as though something had happened before, I remember. It comes quite close to you and stands there and you know it was just this way once before, exactly so; for an instant you almost know how it must go on, but then it disappears as you try to lay hold of it like smoke or a dead memory. "We could never remember, Isabelle," I say. "It's like the rain. That has also become one, out of two gasses, oxygen and hydrogen, which no longer remember they were once gasses. Now they are only rain and have no memory of an earlier time. Erich Maria Remarque oxygen rain memories
