Remarque's best quotes (150 quotes)
Erich Maria Remarque (German: Erich Maria Remarque, born Erich Paul Remarque, Erich Paul Remark) is one of the most famous and widely read German writers of the twentieth century. Born June 22, 1898 in Osnabrück. He was the second of five children of bookbinder Peter Franz Remarque (1867-1954) and Anna Maria Remarque, née Stahlknecht (1871-1917). In his youth, Remarque was fond of the works of Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marcel Proust and Johann Goethe. The best quotes by Erich Maria Remarque are presented in this collection.
After all, you need to be able to lose. Otherwise it would be impossible to live.
Repentance is the most useless thing in the world. Nothing can be returned. Nothing can be fixed. Otherwise we would all be saints. Life didn't mean to make us perfect. Anyone who is perfect belongs in a museum.
How strange are young people today? You hate the past, you despise the present, and you are indifferent to the future. This is unlikely to lead to a good ending.
You only lose a person when he dies.
Life is life, it costs nothing and costs infinitely much.
They say the first seventy years are the hardest to live. And then things will go smoothly.
Life is a sailboat with too many sails, so it can capsize at any moment.
Money, however, does not bring happiness, but it has an extremely calming effect.
We are for equality only with those who are superior to us.
People are even more poisonous than alcohol or tobacco.
What you can't get always seems better than what you have. This is the romance and idiocy of human life.
Principles must sometimes be violated, otherwise there is no joy in them.
People become sentimental more out of grief than out of love.
How scary it is to love a woman and be poor.
For an offended feeling, the truth is almost always harsh and unbearable.
It is better to die when you want to live than to live until you want to die. The greatest hatred arises for those who managed to touch the heart and then spat into the soul.
By the way, I quarreled with everyone. When there are no quarrels, it means everything will end soon.
And when I feel very sad and I don’t understand anything anymore, then I tell myself that it’s better to die when you want to live than to live until you want to die.
I have nothing against adventure, and nothing against love. And least of all - against those that give us a little warmth when we are on the road. Maybe I'm a little against ourselves. Because we take and have very little to give in return.
Whoever is ready to let go with a smile, they try to hold him.
But, strictly speaking, it is a shame to walk the earth and know almost nothing about it. Even several names of colors.
Only those who have lost everything worth living for are free.
Nothing awaits a person anywhere; one must always bring everything with oneself.
You can talk about happiness for five minutes, no more. There is nothing to say here except that you are happy. And people talk about misfortune all night long.
Only cows are happy these days.
Man is great in his plans, but weak in their implementation. This is his problem, and his charm.
Only an unhappy person knows what happiness is. A happy person feels the joy of life no more than a mannequin: he only demonstrates this joy, but it is not given to him. The light doesn't shine when it's light. He shines in the darkness.
In fact, a person is truly happy only when he pays the least attention to time and when he is not driven by fear. And yet, even if you are driven by fear, you can laugh. What else is left to do?
You should not start quarrels with a woman in whom maternal feelings have awakened. All the morality of the world is on her side.
Happiness is the most uncertain and expensive thing in the world.
What can one person give to another except a drop of warmth? And what could be more than this?
The most wonderful city is the one where a person is happy.
Happiness is the most uncertain and expensive thing in the world.
Love is not a mirror pond into which you can stare forever. It has ebbs and flows. And the wreckage of shipwrecks, and sunken cities, and octopuses, and storms, and boxes of gold, and pearls... But the pearls lie very deep.
Not this. Stay friends? Plant a small garden on the cooled lava of faded feelings? No, this is not for you and me. This happens only after minor affairs, and even then it turns out a little vulgar. Love is not tarnished by friendship. The end is the end.
Life did not mean to make us perfect. Anyone who is perfect belongs in a museum.
Only if you finally break up with a person do you begin to be truly interested in everything that concerns him. This is one of the paradoxes of love.
No person can become more of a stranger than someone you loved in the past.
“You don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?” “I don’t even like to think about myself.”
Those who don't expect anything will never be disappointed. Then everything that comes next will seem like a pleasant surprise to you.
Love does not tolerate explanations; it needs actions.
What can one person give to another except a drop of warmth? And what could be more than this? Just don't let anyone get close to you. And if you let him in, you’ll want to hold him. But nothing can be held back.
Human life is too long for love alone. It's just too long.
Love is wonderful. But one of the two always gets bored. And the other one is left with nothing. It freezes and waits for something. Waiting like crazy.
A woman becomes wiser from love, but a man loses his head.
Anyone who looks back too often can easily trip and fall.
If we love each other, we are eternal and immortal, like a heartbeat, or rain, or wind - and that's a lot.
Only those who have been alone more than once know the happiness of meeting their beloved.
Love does not tolerate explanations. She needs actions.
Without love, a person is nothing more than a dead man on vacation, a few dates, a name that doesn’t say anything.
If you want to do something, never ask about the consequences. Otherwise you won't be able to do anything.
Give a woman a few days to live a life that you usually cannot offer her, and you will probably lose her. She will try to find this life again, but with someone else who can always provide for her.
No,” he said quickly. - Not this. Stay friends? Plant a small garden on the cooled lava of faded feelings? No, this is not for you and me. This only happens after small affairs, and even then it turns out rather false. Love is not tarnished by friendship. The end is the end.
All love wants to be eternal. This is her eternal torment.
Women should either be idolized or abandoned. Everything else is a lie.
You should never reduce what you started doing on a grand scale.
A heart that has once merged with another will never experience the same with the same strength.
A woman becomes wiser from love, but a man loses his head.
How clumsy a person becomes when he truly loves! How quickly his self-confidence flies away! And how lonely he seems to himself; all his vaunted experience suddenly dissipates like smoke, and he feels so insecure.
No person can become more alien than the one you loved in the past.
You can protect yourself from insult, but you cannot protect yourself from compassion.
Don't take anything to heart. Very few things in life are important for long.
Women don’t need to explain anything; you always need to act with them.
Remember one thing, boy: you will never, never, never again be funny in the eyes of a woman if you do something for her sake.
Even in the most difficult times, you need to think at least a little about comfort. An old soldier's rule.
Remember, your support is in yourself! Don't look outside for happiness. Your happiness is within you. Be true to yourself.
You can live in different ways - inside yourself and outside. The only question is which life is more valuable.
Women should either be idolized or abandoned. Everything else is a lie.
It seemed to me that a woman should not tell a man that she loves him. Let her shining, happy eyes speak about this. They speak louder than any words.
Love is the highest degree of dissolution in each other. This is the greatest selfishness in the form of complete self-sacrifice and deep sacrifice.
A woman can do God knows what in her life. But one single word cancels it all out: she was a mother.
Whoever wants to hold on loses. They try to hold on to those who are ready to let go with a smile.
If a woman belongs to another, she is five times more desirable than one who can be had—an old rule.
I stood next to her, listened to her, laughed and thought how scary it is to love a woman and be poor.
Apparently, life loves paradoxes: when it seems to you that everything is in absolute order, you often look funny and stand on the edge of an abyss. But when you know that everything is lost, life literally gives you a gift - you may not even lift a finger, luck itself runs after you like a poodle.
Reason is given to man so that he understands: it is impossible to live by reason alone.
People live by feelings, and feelings don’t care who is right.
A woman is not metal furniture; she is a flower. She doesn't want to be businesslike. She needs sunny, sweet words. It’s better to say something nice to her every day than to work for her all your life with gloomy frenzy.
How little we can say about a woman when we are happy. And how much when you are unhappy.
The more primitive a person is, the higher his opinion of himself.
It is a mistake to assume that all people have the same ability to feel.
You can truly learn a person's character when he becomes your boss.
Everything that can be settled with money is cheap.
The greatest hatred arises for those who managed to touch the heart and then spat into the soul.
There is nothing more tiring than being present when a person demonstrates his intelligence. Especially if you have no mind.
“Nothing is lost yet,” I repeated. “You only lose a person when he dies.”
And time doesn’t heal. It does not mend the wounds, it simply covers them on top with a gauze bandage of new impressions, new sensations, life experiences... And sometimes, clinging to something, this bandage flies off, and fresh air enters the wound, giving it new pain... and new life.
If we stop doing stupid things, it means we have grown old.
A woman who saves on herself evokes only one desire among those around her - to save even more on her.
If you want people not to notice anything, you don’t have to be careful.
Cynics have the easiest character, idealists have the most intolerable character. Don't you think this is strange?
You cannot become attached to people with all your heart; this is an unstable and dubious happiness. It’s even worse to give your heart to one single person, because what will be left if he leaves? And he always leaves.
It seemed to me that a woman should not tell a man that she loves him. Let her shining, happy eyes speak about this. They speak louder than any words.
The more primitive a person is, the higher his opinion of himself.
As long as a person does not give up, he is stronger than his destiny.
You can turn into an archangel, a jester, a criminal - and no one will notice. But then, say, a button comes off - and everyone will immediately notice it. How stupidly everything in the world is arranged.
Loving is when you want to grow old with someone.
“Nothing is lost yet,” I repeated. “You only lose a person when he dies.”
There is no shame in being born stupid; It's a shame to die a fool.
And even if there is everything: a person, and love, and happiness, and life, then according to some terrible law this is always not enough, and the more it all seems, the less it actually is.
The first person you think about in the morning and the last person you think about at night is either the reason for your happiness or the reason for your pain.
If you want people not to notice anything, you don’t have to be careful.
Cynics have the easiest character, idealists have the most intolerable character. Don't you think this is strange?
Your person is not the one who “feels good with you” - a hundred people can feel good with you. Your “it’s bad without you.”
Do you want to know what to do if you did something wrong? My answer is: never ask for forgiveness. Do not say anything. Send flowers. No letters. Only flowers. They cover everything... Even graves.
I feel like I'm among people who are going to live forever. At least that's how they behave. They are so busy with money that they have forgotten about life.
Women don’t need to explain anything; you always need to act with them.
“I’m no better and no worse.” I can not.
Words spoken in the dark cannot be true. Real words require bright light.
Remember one thing, boy: you will never, never, never again be funny in the eyes of a woman if you do something for her sake.
The most wonderful city is the one where a person is happy.
People love each other and that’s all: this is the most incredible thing, and the simplest thing.
But any peace is worthless if there is no peace in the heart.
Perhaps the only reason wars arise again and again is that one can never fully feel how the other suffers.
Hate is an acid that corrodes the soul; it makes no difference whether you hate yourself or experience the hatred of another.
Only an unhappy person knows what happiness is.
Strange affair. The most natural things make a person blush, but meanness never does.
Not scary. As long as a friend is alive, nothing is scary.
When a person is afraid, nothing usually happens. Troubles come precisely when you least expect them.
There is one good side to unpleasant memories: they convince a person that he is now happy, even if a second ago he did not believe it. Happiness is such a relative concept! Anyone who has achieved this rarely feels completely unhappy.
Sometimes a person seems to be very cunning; That's when he usually does stupid things.
Any city ceases to be hostile as soon as you eat and drink in it.
A good memory is the basis of friendship and the death of love.
In general, everything is bad, everything is bad. But on the outside everything looks brilliant
As long as a person is alive, nothing is lost.
When a person no longer has anything sacred, everything again and in a much more human way becomes sacred for him.
To live means to live for others. We all feed off each other. Let the light of kindness glimmer at least sometimes... There is no need to give it up. Kindness gives a person strength if life is difficult for him.
There is more unhappiness in life than happiness. The fact that it doesn't last forever is just mercy.
This always happens: only little things explain everything, significant actions explain nothing.
We live in an era of paradoxes. In order to preserve peace, they are forced to wage war.
Sometimes a hundred people die and you don’t feel anything, and sometimes just one, with whom, in general, not much connects you, but it seems like a thousand.
If you believe in something, suffering is not so painful.
It's amazing how you begin to understand others when you understand them yourself. And while you are living well, nothing like that even comes to mind.
It's strange how many ways we choose to hide our true feelings.
Probably every person is good for one person and bad for another.
There is an old soldier’s rule: if you can’t do anything, at least try not to worry.
While you are tormented by many questions, you are not capable of anything. And only when you no longer expect anything, you are open to everything and know no fear.
And what do we really own? Why so much fuss about objects that, at best, are given to us only for a time; why so much chatter about whether we own more or less of them, when this deceptive word “own” means only one thing: to embrace the air?
That's how man is made. Before he has time to get rid of one danger, he is ready to take risks again.
The world never seems so beautiful as in the moment when you say goodbye to it, when you are deprived of freedom. If only the world could always feel like this! But apparently we don’t have enough time for this. And peace.
If you want people not to notice anything, you don’t have to be careful.
Laughing is better than crying. Especially if both are useless.
If you don’t make any special demands on life, then whatever you receive will be a wonderful gift.
The miracle, when experienced, is never complete, only the memory makes it so.
Only idiots claim that they are not idiots. It is useless to contradict them.
What you can't get always seems better than what you have. This is the romance and idiocy of human life.
Become richer than others if their wealth angers you.
How can we know the true measure of our happiness if we do not know what awaits us ahead?
Only if you finally break up with a person do you begin to be truly interested in everything that concerns him. This is one of the paradoxes of love.
Everyone is always on the path to God. The whole question is what a person means by this.
Never make any complex moves when the same can be achieved in much simpler ways. This is one of the wisest rules of life. It is very difficult to apply it in practice. Especially intellectuals and romantics.
To understand something, a person needs to experience a catastrophe, pain, poverty, and the proximity of death.
Poems by Erich Maria Remarque
He fell near Mozhaisk. Everything was white from snow and frost. And the frost instantly shackled him - frozen, he silently sank into the snow - He grew heavier And sank more and more Every day more and more - and he was covered with snow his watch lived a day longer than he Then they stopped at half past seven And then at in December and January everything was white and smooth
And in February, the enemy’s skis silently slid across the three-meter snow above him in the direction of Smolensk.
Then the winds began - the snow melted. Then March came and the first soft warmth. He emerged from his white grave and, as if on dirty clouds, he slid from the last island of snow and touched the ground for the first time. And she thawed around him And his wounds opened and began to bleed - a little, as if he was just now truly dying
He lay in the meadow - next to him - his rifle and helmet and began to come to life like a ghost; he grew - swelled - and moved as if he was seeing that last battle in a dream again. His black lips trembled and decay rose from his insides with a groan. And sometimes he raised the swollen hand But then he died for the third time And shrunk in his threadbare uniform And pressed himself closer and closer to the ground
And his face was peaceful and detached
And beneath him, spring mysteriously rustled. The battlefield again became a meadow. Streams gurgled. Roots moved beneath him. Sprouts pressed forward, pierced the hard surface of the earth. But they could not break through the increasingly softened jacket.
They lifted him up, but it was dark under his uniform. And they died while anemones and snowdrops bloomed around them.
But the life of worms and bugs began - They were like foxes, for whom a mammoth grew in the melting ice - food for life A mountain of meat -
And the earth beneath him began to absorb it into itself. Him, Johann Schmidt from the 3rd company of the 152nd regiment. He flowed down to the roots. Sometimes rabbits jumped over him And butterflies sat on his teeth. At night owls looked at him - He was never found - The small round token that remained from him was found only in two thousand two hundred and twenty, when a children's playground for blind children was being built on this place. Before that, there was a house on this place, and people lived and died above it, and the workers threw away the token, because it was just a piece of corroded rusty tin -
It was two years before he disappeared completely—he was the last—because the seven others who died with him lay deeper than he did, and they decayed first.
His skull seemed to hang in the air for some time, because a young cherry tree sprouted through his eye sockets and lifted him up and blossomed, and he gazed at the sky, among the inflorescences without a chin, because the lower jaw separated and remained below
They mourned him for some time in Giessen, but then they forgot about him, because life became more and more difficult. And only sometimes his mother repeated that he was lucky that he died so early and that he did not have to go through all this,
but she didn't think so. She died seven years later
