Erich Maria Remarque was a surprisingly thoughtful, and clearly extremely intelligent person with an extremely sensitive soul and subtle talent, which he always doubted that he possessed. His books are startlingly frank expressions of real feelings as well as vivid characters that sprang from the author’s own life and heart.

In Remarque’s novels, love is passionate, all-consuming and immortal. ’His’ war is terrible, it breaks one’s will, faith, and fate. His books are about a lost generation — ’lost’ in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world, and because its members felt they had no place among the living.

We selected the best, the most inspiring and beautiful quotations from Remarque’s books ’Three Comrades’, ’Triumphal Arch’, ’All Quiet On the Western Front’ and ’Life on Loan’. The secret of each novel is that all of the experiences, and indeed, a part of the author’s heart, are hidden inside.

1. “No“, he said quickly. ”Never. Stay friends? Try to grow a small rose garden on the ashes of broken feelings? No, this will never work for you and me. It happens only after small affairs and it looks fake. Love should not be spoiled by friendship. The end is the end.“
2. ’No one can become stranger than the person you once loved.’
3. ’How clumsy a person behaves when he is truly in love! How quickly his self-confidence fades! And how lonely he feels; all his praised experience seems to be gone, just like fog, and he feels so weak and helpless.’
4. ’Only he, who knows what loneliness is, knows the true value of meeting with his beloved.“
5. ’Love cannot stand explanations. It requires actions.’
6. ’Love wants to be eternal. That is the source of the torture it causes us.’
7. ’A woman becomes smarter when she is in love, whereas a man simply loses his mind.’
8. ’Only when you leave someone do you become completely fascinated by everything about them. That’s the paradox of love.’
9. ’Only the unhappy man appreciates happiness. A happy man doesn’t truly feel joy any more than a mannequin does. He merely displays it; he doesn’t possess it. Light doesn’t shine in the light; it shines in the dark.’
10. ’One can speak about happiness for only five minutes, and no longer. There’s nothing to say about it, except that you are happy. But one can spend whole days and nights talking about unhappiness.’
11. ’A man is truly happy only when he pays the least amount of attention possible to the passage of time, and when fears no longer chase him. Even if your fears chase you, laugh. What else you can do?’
12. ’Happiness is the most vague and expensive thing is the world.’
13. ’The most wonderful place is the one where you as a person feel happy.’
14. ’A man is stronger than his destiny up until that point when he gives up.’
15. ’The more primitive a man is, the more highly he regards himself.’
16. ’There’s nothing more tedious than seeing how a person shows his intellect, especially if there isn’t any.’
17. ”Nothing’s lost yet”, I said. “You only lose someone when he’s dead.”
18. ’The cynics have the most appealing character, the idealists have the worst. Don’t you find it strange?’
19. ’The less a man loves himself, the more he values.’
20. ’It’s a mistake to think that all people have the same ability to feel.’
21. ’If you don’t want people to notice anything, don’t be cautious.’
22. ’Remember this one thing, my boy: never, never, never can a man make himself ridiculous in the eyes of a woman when he does something for her sake.’
23. ’I have always thought a woman should not tell a man she is in love with him. Her shining and happy eyes should bear witness to that.’
24. ’Women should be either worshipped, or abandoned. Anything else is just lies.’
25. ’If a woman belongs to another man, she is five times more desirable than the one you can easily have.’
26. ’Never explain anything to women. Instead, take action. Always act.’
27. ’A woman is not a piece of furniture, she is a beautiful flower. She should only hear nice words and command your full attention. It is better to say something wonderful to her every day than to work in a gloomy frenzy for her sake every day of your life.’
28. ’I thought what a damned business it was to love a woman and yet to be poor at the same time.’
29. ’Whatever you can’t get always seems better than whatever you have. This is the romance and the stupidity of our life.’
30. ’They say life is hard for the first seventy years. Then it starts getting better.’
31. ’Life is like a sailing boat which has too many sails and can turn over at any time.’
32. ’Repentance is the most useless thing in the world. Nothing can be brought back or changed. Nothing can be fixed. Otherwise we would all be saints. Life didn’t mean for us to be perfect. Those who are perfect should be placed in museum.’
33. ’You have to break your principles sometimes. Otherwise they bring you no joy.’
34. ’It’s better to die when you want to live, than live until you want to die.’
35. ’Whatever happens to you, never take it personally. Nothing in this world is so important.’

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