Quotes by "Erich Maria Remarque"

It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We're living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!

We have our dreams because without them we could not bear the truth.

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.

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

Sometimes I used to think that one day i should wake up, and all that had been would be over. forgotten, sunk, drowned. Nothing was sure - not even memory.

Может быть, у смерти совсем другое имя. Мы ведь видим ее всегда только с одной стороны. Может быть, смерть - это совершенная любовь между нами и Богом.

A man has to have something he can put faith in. Can't you see that? What I want is someone that will love me; she would have me and I her. Otherwise a man may just go hang himself

- Ты хочешь знать, как быть, если сделал что-то не так? Отвечаю, детка: никогда не проси прощения. Ничего не говори. Посылай цветы. Без писем. Только цветы. Они покрывают все. Даже могилы.

She was very beautiful and he felt he loved her. She was not beautiful as a state or a picture is beautiful; she was beautiful as a meadow across which the wind blows. It was life that pulsed in her and that had formed her into what she was.

There is no guilt in feelings ever.

- Никогда, Робби, не стремись знать слишком много! Чем меньше знаешь, тем проще живется. Знание делает человека свободным, но и несчастным. Давай выпьем за наивность, за глупость и все, что к ним относится - за любовь, за веру в будущее, за мечты о счастье - за божественную глупость, за потерянный рай...

- Srećna sam! Stojao sam i gledao je. Bila je to samo jedna reč, ali reč koju još nikada nisam ovako čuo. Poznavao sam žene, ali su to uvek bili prolazni susreti i doživljaji... Jedan čas zbunjenosti, jedan čas samoće, bekstvo od sebe sama, od očajanja, od praznine. Ništa drugo nisam ni želeo, jer sam naučio da se čovek ni na šta ne može osloniti, nego samo na sebe i jedino na ponekog druga. Sad sam najednom video da nešto predstavljam jednom biću, prosto zato što sam tu, da je ono srećno što sam uz njega. Kada se to kaže, izgleda sasvim jednostavno; ali kad se o tome razmisli, onda je nešto zaista beskrajno. To čoveka može sasvim da izmeni. To je ljubav, pa ipak nešto drugo. Nešto zašta vredi živeti. Muškarac ne može da živi za ljubav. Ali za ljudsko biće može.

It's not much. You begin by thinking there is something extraordinary about it. But you'll find out, when you've been out in the world a while longer, unhappiness is the commonest thing there is.

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.

They are more human and more brotherly towards one another, it seems to me, than we are. But perhaps that is merely because they feel themselves to be more unfortunate than us.

I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh.