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...

A miracle is never perfect when it happens, there are always little disappointments. But once it’s gone for good and nothing can change it, memory could make it perfect and then it would never change....

But what I would like to know,” says Albert, “is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No.””I’m sure there would,” I interject, “he was against it from the...

Suddenly he knew all the things he should have said.

Our knowledge of life is limited to death

Pasaulis niekada neatrodo toks gražus, kaip tą akimirką, kaii jį paliekame, kai jums atima laisvę

A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, a single station; there are hundreds of thousands...

…and without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die.

We’re no longer young men. We’ve lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to...

It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men. They are so much more energetic and compromising than the big fellows.

Love should not be polluted with friendship.

The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal… It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of...

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.

Galimybė nusižudyti yra likimo dovana, kurią mes retai tesuvokiame. Ji suteikia laisvo apsisprendimo iliuziją. Ko gero, mes žudomės kur kas dažniau, negu manome. Tik nejaučiame to.

The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

Only the stupid conquer in life; the other man foreseestoo many obstacles and becomes uncertain before he starts.

I soon found out this much:–terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;–but it kills, if a man thinks about it.

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the...

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

A man has to have something he can put faith in.

We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer....

Stebuklas, kai jį patiri, niekuomet nėra pilnas, tik atmintis padaro jį tokiu.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one...

Die Bücher habe ich nach und nach gekauft von dem Geld, das ich mir Stundengeben verdiente. Viele davon antiquarisch, alle Klassiker zum Beispiel, ein Band kostete eine Mark und zwanzig Pfennig in steifem, blauem Leinen....

The things men did or felt they had to do.

Vienatvė ieško kelionės draugo, neklausdama, kas jis. Kas to nesupranta, tas niekada nebuvo vienišas, o tik vienas.

Obuze, mitraliere, aburi de gaze, flotile de tancuri – strivire, devorare, moarte.

Kiekvieną akimirką jaučiame, kad negalime laimės išlaikyti, ir nė nebandome Bet jeigu mes nemėginame sučiupti jos ir suturėti savo šiurkščiomis rankomis, tai gal ji, niekieno nebaidoma, išlieka mūsų akių gilumoje? Gal ji išlieka ten, kol...

But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our...

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...

… We had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

Ce qu’on laisse approcher, on veut le retenir. Et on ne peut rien retenir.

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...

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try...

Mes gavome dovanų ugnį, nes mumyse buvo kažkas dieviško. O dabar mes slepiame ją, nes žudome savyje tą dievišką dalelytę.

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from...

He’s afraid,” Graber said.”Yes, naturally. But he’s a good dog.””And a man-eater.””We’re all that.””Why?””We are. And we think, just like that dog, that we are still good. And just like him we are looking for...

We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.

On devient mélancolique lorsqu’on pense à la vie… cynique lorsqu’on voit ce qu’en font la plupart des gens.

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!

From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us–mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long...

That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from...

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There’s much too little forgetting.

I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench;–then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western...

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

From this day forth I placedressmakers above philosophers. Those people bring beautyinto life, and that’s worth a hundred times the most unfathomable meditations.

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...

What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love!

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...