"All Quiet on the Western Front" Quotes

The war has ruined us for everything.

The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines.

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

It's queer, when one thinks about it. We are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now who's in the right?

The war has shattered all words of comfort.

I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life.

I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.

The last bombardment showed me that the will to live that has been kindled in me is not yet extinct.

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.

The war is a terrible thing, but I am in it and I must live through it. I can only do it by not resisting the future, by living completely in the present, by accepting in detail every moment as it comes, by feeling the fullness and richness of all my experiences.