Erich Maria Remarque - how does he see the eyes of a sophisticated modern reader? The genius of the 20th century, the voice of the “lost generation”, the brightest and most recognizable German writer who had a remarkable influence on literature in the future, a man with a sensitive and vulnerable soul? Perhaps all this taken together! His works are deservedly included in the top lists, and the quotes of Erich Maria Remarque permeated with a deep sense have long become winged phrases.

Interesting facts about the writer and his work

Remarque's real name is Erich Paul. In 1918, he replaced his second part with Maria in memory of the deceased mother, with whom he was very close. Since then, the writer’s personality has been fanned by speculation and myths; people who are poorly oriented in the world of literature even consider him a woman. The surname did not go unnoticed by the “public” either: after the publication of the first novels, the Nazis rumored that it was a pseudonym that was invented by a descendant of French Jews Kramer (Remarque in reverse reading). For a long time this served as an occasion for persecution.

Before finding his calling, the young man managed to visit the front, and then, returning home due to a serious injury, worked as a tombstone seller, accountant, organist, and tutor. The profession of the writer was not accidental: the life of Erich from a young age was filled with books, because his father worked as a bookbinder. One of the most beloved authors is Dostoevsky.

Top 3 interesting moments related to creativity:

  1. The first published work was the novel "The Mansard of Dreams." The writer was not satisfied with the result of his work: in order not to be disgraced in front of the readers, he personally bought up the entire published circulation.
  2. The famous novel “On the Western Front Without Changes” is closely connected with the number 6: it took Remarck six weeks to write a masterpiece, and for six months the manuscript was gathering dust on the table, waiting in the wings. Subsequently, in post-war Germany, just over a year, 1.5 million copies of the book were sold.
  3. The writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which did not grow together due to accusations by the League of German officers who claimed that Remarque simply stole the manuscript from his deceased comrade.

Erich Maria was the holder of a baronial title, which ... he bought from an impoverished aristocrat for 500 marks. And his business cards were crowned with an image of the crown. The writer’s hobbies were similar to “origin”: collecting carpets, impressionist paintings and images of angels, which, he believed, protect his life from troubles. Nevertheless, these cute creatures did not help him in obtaining American citizenship. For a long 14 years, Remarque had to endure all the lawsuits of the protracted procedure, while his "moral appearance" ceased to cause doubts among the Americans.

The writer had two marriages, and with his first wife he combined family ties twice - the second time it was a noble act, giving Ilse Jutte the opportunity to get out of Germany. The main woman in Remarque's life was his compatriot Marlene Dietrich, who became the prototype of Joan Madu in the Arc de Triomphe. Painful and filled with countless humiliations, the novel had an equally sad end: in response to the offer of a hand and heart from a woman, there was a revelation that she had an abortion from another.

Despite the long setbacks in his personal life, Remarque fully realized himself in creativity: his works inspired people in all corners of the globe. For example, the Soviet rock band Black Obelisk borrowed the name from his novel. And the International Astronomical Union named a crater on Mercury in his honor.

Quotes, sayings and aphorisms by Erich Maria Remarque

Each work of the writer, whether it be “Life on loan”, “Arc de Triomphe”, “Return” or any other novel is a storehouse of valuable thoughts. Remarque himself did not like to talk about his work, preferring that books do it - the greatest heritage that he presented to people. All of them are woven from living feelings and vivid images that flickered in front of his eyes and lived in his heart. Each quotation from the works is permeated with such depth that sometimes can not be found in huge volumes written by modern authors.

For the reader’s judgment, the 100 best quotes about love, friendship, worldly happiness, bitter sadness and hatred, the destructive influence of war, sharp irony and life in general from the most popular books.

Quotes about love

In his books she is seen as a great happiness and the same pain. This is a passionate feeling, all-consuming, permeating every cell of the body, occupying all thoughts and dreams. It runs like a red thread through all the works of the author. He drew inspiration from his personal life, endowing the heroines of the novels with the features of his beloved - talented, original and luxurious.

After at least 4 stormy novels, Remarque showed love with a strong, spiritualizing, but by no means an eternal feeling that is so difficult to hold ...

Love does not tolerate explanations. She needs action.

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Only if you finally part with a person do you start to be truly interested in everything that concerns him. This is one of the paradoxes of love.

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“No,” he said quickly. - Just not that. Remain friends? To plant a small garden on the cooled lava of dying feelings? No, this is not for you and me. This happens only after a little affair, and even that turns out pretty fake. Love is not stained by friendship. The end is the end. ”

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All love wants to be eternal. This is her eternal torment.

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A woman grows smarter from love, and a man loses his head.

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No man can become stranger than the one you loved in the past.

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What can one person give to another, except a drop of heat? And what could be more than that?

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How awkward a person becomes when he truly loves! How quickly self-confidence flies from him! And how lonely he seems to himself; all his boasted experience suddenly dissipates like smoke, and he feels so insecure.

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Only one who has been left alone more than once knows the happiness of meeting with his beloved.

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People become sentimental from grief rather than from love.

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Love is not a mirror pond that you can always look at. She has ebbs and flows. And the wreckage of wrecked ships, and sunken cities, and octopuses, and storms, and boxes of gold, and pearls ... But the pearls - they lie very deep.

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If we love each other, we are eternal and immortal, like a heartbeat, or rain, or wind, - and this is a lot.

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Love is the highest degree of dissolution in each other. This is the greatest egoism in the form of complete self-sacrifice and deep sacrifice.

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It seemed to me that a woman should not tell a man that she loves him. Let her shining, happy eyes speak of this. They are more eloquent than any words.

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The most fragile thing on Earth is the love of a woman. One wrong step, word, look - and nothing can be restored.

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Your man is not the one who “is good with you” - hundreds of people can be good with you. Yours - "it’s bad without you."

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I stood next to her, listened to her, laughed and thought, how terrible it is to love a woman and be poor.

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The first person you think about in the morning and the last person you think at night is either the reason for your happiness or the reason for your pain.

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When you find yours, you don’t even want to look at something else.

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Human life is too long for love alone. Just too long. Love is wonderful. But one of the two always gets bored. And the other is left with nothing. It will freeze and wait for something ... It waits like crazy ...

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True love does not tolerate outsiders.

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Love is the desire to convey further that which you cannot hold.

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We! What an unusual word! The most mysterious thing in the world.

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Without love, a man is nothing more than a dead man on vacation, a few dates, a nameless tongue.

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To love is when you want to grow old with someone.

Aphorisms about life

Each author’s book is about life with all its contradictions and diversity. In the works of Remarque, she is seen as different: incomprehensible, short, newly acquired, glorious, swine, promiscuous, glorious, damned ... This topic is topical for the writer, she was so worried that even the word itself in different variations was used in the names of three novels. In each of his works there will be statements about life in which he, reasoning, philosophizing, guiding and prompting, invariably encourages the reader to simply live. Life is so multifaceted that it is unlikely that a simple person will be able to find its true meaning. But it seems Remarque did it.

Life is a sailboat with too many sails, so at any moment it can turn over.

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So much has changed in my life that it seemed to me that everything should be different everywhere.

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Repentance is the most useless thing in the world. You can’t return anything. Nothing can be fixed. Otherwise we would all be saints. Life did not mean to make us perfect. One who is perfect has a place in the museum.

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We live, eating illusions from the past, and we do our debts at the expense of the future.

They say the hardest thing is to live the first seventy years. And then things go smoothly.

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I have the feeling that I was among people who are going to live forever. In any case, they behave this way. They are so occupied with money that they forgot about life.

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You can turn into an archangel, a jester, a criminal - and no one will notice. But, say, a button came off of you - and everyone will immediately notice it. How stupid everything is.

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And time doesn’t heal.It does not flood the wounds, it simply covers them from above with a gauze bandage of new impressions, new sensations, life experiences ... And sometimes, clinging to something, this bandage flies and fresh air enters the wound, giving it new pain ... and new life ...

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Apparently, life loves paradoxes: when it seems to you that everything is in perfect order, you often look ridiculous and stand on the edge of the abyss. But when you know that everything is lost, life literally annoys you - you don’t even have to move your finger, luck itself runs after you like a poodle.

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Give the 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 it.

Life is life, it does not cost anything and costs infinitely much.

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You can live in different ways - within yourself and without. The only question is which life is more valuable.

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Clouds are everlasting volatile wanderers. Clouds are like life ... Life is always changing, it is as diverse, restless and beautiful ...

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Why do you talk about life, instead of feeling it?

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Life is a disease, and death begins from birth.

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Let's drink guys! For the fact that we live! For the fact that we breathe! After all, we feel life so much! We don’t even know what to do with her!

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Life has more misfortune than happiness. That it does not last forever is simply mercy.

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Those who expect nothing will never be disappointed. Here is a good rule of life. Then everything that comes later will seem like a pleasant surprise to you.

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Life will end soon, and whether we will rejoice or grieve - anyway, then we will not be paid for either.

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A life. She lavishes each of us, like a fool who loses his money to a cheater.

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You need to be able to and lose. Otherwise it would be impossible to live.

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In general, I want to live without reasoning, without listening to advice, without any warnings. Live as you live.

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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 to the point that you want to die.

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If you don’t make any special claims to life, then everything you receive will be a wonderful gift.

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Suppose we survive: but will we live?

Wise phrases about a man

Man is the biggest mystery of nature. Of course, even the most striking quotes from Remarque's books will not give an exhaustive answer to who we are and where we are going. However, even an attempt to express in words what is hidden from the gaze of others, deserves attention, perhaps even helps to deeper understand yourself and others, comprehensively develops. Indeed, as the author himself said: “To be born a fool is not a shame! But it’s a shame to die a fool! ”

Until a person surrenders, he is stronger than his fate.

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The less a person has vanity, the more he costs.

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There is nothing more tiring than being present when a person demonstrates his mind. Especially if there is no mind.

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Sometimes a hundred people die and you don’t feel anything, and sometimes one, with which in general not much connects you, but it seems like it's a thousand.

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Sometimes it seems to a person that he is very cunning; it is then that he usually does stupid things.

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The more primitive a person is, the higher his opinion of himself.

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Strange affair. The most natural things drive a person into the paint, but meanness never.

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The character of a person can truly be recognized when he becomes your boss.

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Reason is given to man so that he understands: it is impossible to live by reason alone.

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Those who too often look back can easily stumble and fall.

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Man is great in his plans, but weak in their implementation. This is his misfortune, and his charm.

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Nowhere is anything waiting for a person, you always have to bring everything with yourself.

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People have even more poison than alcohol or tobacco.

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You lose a person only when he dies.

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What are the current young people strange. You hate the past, despise the present, and the future does not matter to you. This is unlikely to lead to a good end.

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In dark times, bright people are clearly visible.

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Conscience usually torments those who are not guilty.

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Gratitude, if only you are able to feel it, warms the soul.

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Oddly enough, but all sorts of troubles and misfortunes in this world very often come from people of small stature; they have a much more inactive and energetic character than people tall.

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The strongest feeling is disappointment. Not resentment, not jealousy, and not even hatred ... after them there is at least something in the soul, after disappointment - emptiness.

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The easiest character among cynics, the most intolerable among idealists. Don't you find this strange?

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A lonely person cannot be abandoned. Oh, this miserable human need for a grain of heat. And is there really anything other than loneliness.

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Man always becomes a captive of his own dreams, and not a stranger.

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The ability to forgive - this is the only thing in man from God.

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Man can never be tempered. He can only get used to a lot.

Sayings about the war

“The death of one person is death; the death of two million is just statistics, ”Remarque wrote desperately about the war. For him, this is the greatest evil that he despised and hated. In his novels, he spoke about the war in a cynical light, described all its monstrosity, countless senseless victims, horrifying the fate of ordinary people, former soldiers of yesterday who could not find their place in post-war life. The writer warned future generations against this scourge, contrasting it with more important moral values: honesty, justice, self-esteem, decency.

The front seems to me an ominous whirlpool. Far from its center, in calm waters, you already begin to feel the force with which it sucks you into its funnel, slowly, inevitably, almost completely paralyzing all resistance.

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For two years in a row to shoot from a rifle and throw grenades - this cannot be dumped from oneself, like dirty laundry being dumped ...

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Attack, counterattack, strike, counterattack - all these are words, but how much lies behind them!

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Heavy fire. Barrage. Fire curtains. Mines. Gases Tanks. Machine guns. Hand grenades. These are all words, words, but behind them are all the horrors that humanity is experiencing.

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I think it’s more like a fever. Nobody seems to want to, and you look, she’s right there. We don’t want a war, others say the same thing, and yet almost the whole world got embroiled in it.

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After the war, people began to go to political meetings, and not to church.

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Too much blood has been shed on this earth to maintain faith in heavenly father!

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All day we lounged on the beach, exposing the naked bodies to the sun. To be naked, without calculation, without weapons, without form - this in itself is already equivalent to the world.

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Even in the most difficult times, you need to think at least a little about comfort. Old soldier rule.

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They were still writing articles and giving speeches, and we had already seen the infirmaries and the dying; they still said that there was nothing higher than serving the state, and we already knew that the fear of death was stronger.

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War is a kind of dangerous disease from which one can die, as they die from cancer and tuberculosis, from flu and dysentery. Only death occurs much more often, and death comes in much more diverse and terrible guises.

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... all we can do is play cards, swear and fight. Not too much for twenty - too much for twenty years.

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We became soldiers of our own free will, out of enthusiasm; but everything was done here to knock this feeling out of us.

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We have not had time to take root. The war washed away us. For others, those older, war is a temporary break, they can mentally skip it. The war caught us and carried us, and we do not know how it will all end.

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But how do you command me to look after a person if he is at the front!

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It wouldn’t be so bad at war, if only you could sleep more.

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We are soldiers, and only then, in an amazing and bashful way, we are also people.

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- So why are there still wars? Asks Tyaden.

Kat shrugs:

“So there are people who benefit from the war.”

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Every decent Kaiser needs at least one war, otherwise he will not be famous.

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You get used to everything in the world, even to a trench.

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What will our fathers say if we ever rise from the graves and stand before them and demand a report? What can they expect from us if we live to see the day when there will be no war?

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To what extent is our thousand-year-old civilization false and worthless, if it could not even prevent these blood flows, if it allowed hundreds of thousands of such dungeons to exist in the world. Only in the infirmary do you see firsthand what war is.

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The war made us worthless. We are no longer youth. We are no longer going to take life from battle. We are runaways. We are running from ourselves. From our lives ... We are cut off from rational activity, from human aspirations, from progress. We no longer believe in them. We believe in war.

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We are insensible dead, to whom some magician, some evil wizard regained the ability to run and kill.

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The front is a cell, and the one who got into it has to strain his nerves and wait for what will happen to him next.