German writer Erich Maria Remarque began writing after he fought in the First World War. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the novel with which Remarque debuted, made the impression of a bomb exploding. The story of the “lost generation” was translated into 25 languages, filmed and received all possible prizes from the Academy of Film Arts.
“Life on Borrow” was published in 1959, later the title was changed to “Heaven Knows No Favorites.” In the novel, the writer explores the eternal theme of life and death. At gunpoint is the paradoxical observation that, for all the transience of life, it is eternal, and death, for all its inevitability, is instantaneous. In Russia, the novel under the first title was published in the magazine “Foreign Literature”. Based on the film "Bobby Deerfield" was created in 1977, the racer was played by Al Pacino (directed by Sydney Pollack).
Waiting for the inevitable
So, the novel is about life and death. Main characters: Lilian and Clerfe. They are united by exactly opposite desires: Lilian is sick with tuberculosis, so she desperately wants to live, and Clerfe recklessly risks her life, testing her strength and, apparently, strives to die.
The philosophy of the “lost generation” affected the minds of the main characters of the novel. The meaninglessness of wasted life worries them both.
Here are a few quotes from E. M. Remarque’s book “Life on Borrow”:
They all strive either for adventure, or for business, or to fill the emptiness in themselves with the noise of jazz.
Entertainment and the hunt for adventure haunt a whole generation of people, because, as the wars that happened have shown, there are no guarantees about the coming of tomorrow. The only way to feel alive is to rush into the abyss of life with all your might.
They say that nowadays there are two ways to deal with money. One is to save money and then lose it during inflation, the other is to spend it.
At the same time, meeting with Lilian makes Clerfay take a different look at life: from the point of view of a girl for whom every day she lives is a gift of fate.
Another quote from the book “Life on Borrow”:
She is chasing life, only life, she is hunting for it like crazy, as if life were a white deer or a fairy-tale unicorn. She gives herself so much to the chase that her passion infects others. She knows neither restraint nor looking back. With her you feel either old and shabby, or like a perfect child.
And then, from the depths of forgotten years, someone’s faces suddenly emerge, old dreams and shadows of old dreams are resurrected, and then suddenly, like a flash of lightning in the twilight, a long-forgotten feeling of the uniqueness of life appears.
Oh happiness
- 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.
- 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?
- The most wonderful city is the one where a person is happy.
- Happiness is the most uncertain and expensive thing in the world.
Rally through life
What can revive an almost dead soul in the midst of boredom and routine? Only life itself. As soon as a person faces the threat of losing it, he clings with all his might to this ephemeral substance, although he perfectly understands that this is a temporary state. But why do you want to continue it? Is it really possible that omnipotent love makes a person live...
Quotes from “Life on Borrow” on this topic:
She knows that she must die, and she has gotten used to this thought, like people get used to morphine, this thought transforms the whole world for her, she knows no fear, neither vulgarity nor blasphemy frightens her.
Why the hell do I feel something like horror, instead of, without thinking, rush into the whirlpool?
The main character of the novel does not immediately trust the flaring feeling, because he risks his life too often; it has no value for him. Too intrusive, short and unpredictable, says Clerfe.
You come, watch a play, in which at first you don’t understand a word, and then, when you begin to understand something, it’s time for you to leave.
He is irritated by any manifestations of insincerity, any falsehood, hypocrisy. A symbol of such an indifferent manifestation of care for him is the treating staff of the sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, where Lilian is being treated.
E. M. Remarque, “Life on Borrow”, quotes:
And why do these guardians of health treat people who are admitted to the hospital with such patient superiority, as if they were babies or idiots?
But unexpectedly for himself, he concludes that it is the inevitability of death that makes it possible for a person to feel life:
I realized that everything in which we consider ourselves superior to animals - our happiness, more personal and more multifaceted, our deeper knowledge and more cruel soul, our capacity for compassion and even our idea of \u200b\u200bGod - all this is bought at the same price: we learned what, according to people, is inaccessible to animals - we learned the inevitability of death.
About the mind, feelings and desires
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 person always becomes a prisoner of his own dream, and not of someone else’s.
There will always be people who are worse off than you.
The fireworks have gone out, why rummage through the ashes?
I want to own everything, which means owning nothing.
On the scales
There is no place for politics in the novel “Life on Borrow”: the war is over, people have returned to peaceful life and are trying in different ways to improve it. Except for the main characters of the novel, who go against the grain of life. Why? What makes Lillian rush into the whirlpool of life at the first opportunity, to leave the shelter, where there may be a chance of recovery.
The heroine's thoughts in quotes:
What do I know about life? Destruction, flight from Belgium, tears, fear, death of parents, hunger, and then illness due to hunger and flight. Before that I was a child.
I almost don’t remember what cities look like at night. What do I know about the sea of lights, about the avenues and streets sparkling at night? All I know is darkened windows and a hail of bombs falling from the darkness. All I know is occupation, seeking shelter and cold. Happiness? How narrowed this boundless word that once shone in my dreams. An unheated room, a piece of bread, a shelter, any place that was not under fire began to seem like happiness.
The death of a friend pushes Lillian to a reckless act: to leave the sanatorium. This rebellion is actually an escape from death, an escape from a dream. She didn’t think much about it, because the value of life can only be known by living it.
“Life on Borrow”, quotes from the book:
Really, in order to understand something, a person needs to experience a catastrophe, pain, poverty, the proximity of death?!
Clerfay resists, he is used to taking risks, and at first his meeting with Lilian seems like an adventure with a provincial girl. Unlike Lillian, he had something to lose, he had a desire to take risks and did not have much desire to live. He resisted until he realized that love could not be overcome. Love is like death - also inevitable and inescapable. And he rushes after his beloved.
There is no turning back in love. You can never start over: what happens remains in the blood... Love, like time, is irreversible. And neither sacrifices, nor readiness for anything, nor good will - nothing can help, such is the gloomy and ruthless law of love.
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.
And no plans for the future
To seek consolation in everything, to find it even where there is none—obsessed with this thought, Lillian flees from death.
I have no future. Not having a future is almost the same as not obeying earthly laws.
She looks for symbols in the environment that confirm she is right. Even the St. Gotthard railway tunnel, through which the heroes pass on the way to Paris, seems to Lilian to be the biblical River Styx, which cannot be entered twice. The gloom and darkness of the tunnel is a bleak past, at the end of the tunnel is the bright light of life...
In inconsolable situations, people always seek comfort wherever they can. And they find it.
You don’t have to look life in the face, it’s enough to feel it.
Now, like light and shadow, they were inseparable from each other.
Lillian suddenly realized how they were alike. They were both people without a future. Clerfay's future extended to the next races, and hers to the next bleeding.
For Clerfe, finding love meant a new attitude towards life.
He admits to himself:
I realized that there is no place that is so good that it is worth throwing your life away for. And there are almost no people for whom it would be worth doing this.
He decides to marry Lillian and proposes to her. He sees charm in what was previously inaccessible and contrary to the protagonist’s worldview.
“Life on Borrow”, quotes:
How beautiful are these women who do not allow us to become demigods, turning us into fathers of families, into respectable burghers, into breadwinners; women who catch us in their nets, promising to turn us into gods. Aren't they beautiful?
In fact, it was a death sentence for their relationship. Lillian could not make plans for the future; she knew too well about her illness. She decides to part with her lover, because they cannot have any future...
Quotes about life from the novel “Life on Borrow” by Erich Maria Remarque
Life on loan. Life when you don’t regret anything, because, in essence, there is nothing left to lose. This is love on the verge of doom. This is luxury on the verge of ruin. This is fun on the verge of grief and risk on the verge of death. There is no future. Death is not a word, but a reality. Life goes on. Life is Beautiful!..
You think that I am throwing away my money, but I think that you are throwing away your life.
And what, in essence, is a long life? Long past. Our future each time lasts only until the next breath. Nobody knows what will happen next. Each of us lives for the minute. Everything that awaits us after this minute is only hopes and illusions.
You don't always do the right thing, my son. Even if you yourself are aware of it. But this is precisely the beauty of life sometimes.
About love
- 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.
- 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. And 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. He freezes and waits for something... He waits like crazy...
- Only those who have been alone more than once know the happiness of meeting their beloved.
- Love does not tolerate explanations. She needs actions.
- “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.
- 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.
About the woman
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
