All’s Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque

Ref: Erich Remarque (1928). All’s Quiet on the Western Front.

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Summary­

  • World War I, the horror of Trench Warfare and Industrial Age Combat as narrated by the protagonist, German Wehrmacht soldier Paul Bäumer. His fictional account of the war is a bitter criticism against the romantic ideals of warfare.

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Misc Quotes

  • Where would the world be if one brought every man to book?

  • Albert Kropp, the clearest thinker among us and therefore only a lance-corporal.

  • We were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies.

  • But by far the most important result was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of esprit de corps, which in the field developed into the finest thing that arose out of the war – comradeship.

  • We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have. We are two men, two sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drops from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? Formerly we should not have had a single thought in common- now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, so intimate that we do not even speak.

  • Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades- words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

  • When I see them (civilians) here, in their rooms, in their offices, about their occupations, I feel an irresistible attraction in it, I would like to be here too and forget the war; but also it repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a man's life, he ought to smash it to bits.

  • What is leave? A Pause that only makes everything after it so much worse.

  • We do not take kindly to all this polishing, much less to the full-dress parades. Such things exasperate a soldier more than the front-line.

  • There must be some people to whom the war is useful?

  • I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear.

  • It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.

  • We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

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