Quotes & Sayings About Love Remarque

It is the second night," he said. "The dangerous night. The charm of the unknown is gone and the charm of familiarity has not yet come. We'll survive it. — Erich Maria Remarque

There is no guilt in feelings ever. — Erich Maria Remarque

We live in rooms too much, I say. We think too much in rooms. We make love too much in rooms. We despair too much in rooms. Can you despair in the open? — Erich Maria Remarque

For a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real, profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness even - love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge. — Erich Maria Remarque

She was very beautiful and he felt he loved her. She was not beautiful as a state or a picture is beautiful; she was beautiful as a meadow across which the wind blows. It was life that pulsed in her and that had formed her into what she was. — Erich Maria Remarque

My healthy blood was powerless to cure the sick blood of my beloved. That was beyond understanding. And so is death. — Erich Maria Remarque

The best way to lose a woman was to show her a kind of life that one could offer her for only a few days. — Erich Maria Remarque

We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war. — Erich Maria Remarque

I had the feeling of slipping down a smooth bottomless pit. It had nothing to do with Breuer and the people. It had nothing to do with Pat even. It was the melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them; that love begins with a human being but does not end in him; and that everything can be there: a human being, love, happiness, life - and that yet in some terrible way it is always too little, and grows ever less the more it seems. — Erich Maria Remarque

All that meets me, all that floods over me are but feelings - greed of life, love of home, yearning for the blood, intoxication of deliverance. — Erich Maria Remarque

If things went according to the death notices, ... the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it. Pure love, which in reality is to be found so seldom, shines on all sides in death, and is the commonest thing of all. — Erich Maria Remarque

The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal ... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair. — Erich Maria Remarque

I hate it when people mix things, I hate the cowlike yearning toward one another while the beauty and the power of a great work breaks over one; I hate the swimming looks of lovers, the foolish blissful cuddling, the indecent sheepish happiness that can never rise above itself; I hate all the talk of becoming one through love; — Erich Maria Remarque

I did not want to think so much about her. I wanted to take her as an unexpected, delightful gift, that had come and would go again - nothing more. I meant not to give room to the thought that it could ever be more. I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing. — Erich Maria Remarque

Home - what other home existed for one who belonged nowhere, but the stormy one in the heart of another for a short time? Was not this the reason why love, when it struck the hearts of the homeless, shook and possessed them so completely - because they had nothing else? Had he not for this very reason tried to avoid it? And had it not followed him and overtaken him and struck him down? It was harder to rise again on the slippery ice of a foreign land than on familiar and accustomed ground. — Erich Maria Remarque

shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love. The — Erich Maria Remarque

Actually, what does man live for?"
"To think about it. Any other question?"
"Yes. Why does he die just when he has done that and has become a bit more sensible?" "Some people die without having become more sensible."
"Don't evade my question. And don't start talking about the transmigration of souls."
"I'll ask you something else first. Lions kill antelopes; spiders flies; foxes chickens; which is the only race in the world that wars on itself uninterruptedly, fighting and killing one another?"
"Those are questions for children. The crown of creation, of course, the human being - who invented the words love, kindness, and mercy." "Good. And who is the only being in Nature that is capable of committing suicide and does it?" "Again the human being - who invented eternity, God, and resurrection."
"Excellent," Ravic said. "You see of how many contradictions we consist. And you want to know why we die? — Erich Maria Remarque

I stand there and wonder whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love. — Erich Maria Remarque

People should die, only when they're alone. Or when they hate - not when they love. — Erich Maria Remarque

These memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow
a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires
but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us. They are completely lost to us. They arise no more; we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are a mysterious reflection, an apparition that haunts us, that we fear and love without hope. They are unattainable and we know it.
And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us, we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in memory; but the man himself it is not. — Erich Maria Remarque

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5 — Erich Maria Remarque

And without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die. — Erich Maria Remarque

I felt today when the night melted away into a flowering bush and the wind smelled of strawberries and without love one is only a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it and one might as well die — Erich Maria Remarque

What has that to do with love?"
"A great deal. It takes care of its continuance. Otherwise we would love once only and reject everything else later. But as it is, the remnant of desire for the man one leaves behind, or by whom one is left behind, becomes the halo around the head of the new one. To have lost someone before in itself gives the new one a certain romantic glamour. The hallowed old illusion. — Erich Maria Remarque

A woman who is desired by someone else, even a love-starved coffinmaker, immediately becomes more precious than before. Man, as it happens, lives by relative rather than absolute values. — Erich Maria Remarque

See what has become of us. As far as I know, only the old Greeks had gods of drinking and the joy of life: Bacchus and Dionysus. Instead of that we have Freud, inferiority complexes and the psychoanalysis. We're afraid of the too great words in love and not afraid of much too great words in politics. A sorry generation! — Erich Maria Remarque

Sweet words. Gentle deceptive balm. Help, love, to belong together, to come back again - words, sweet words. Nothing but words. How many words existed for this simple, wild, cruel attraction of two bodies! What a rainbow of imagination, lies, sentiment, and self-deception enclosed it! — Erich Maria Remarque

What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love! — Erich Maria Remarque

A neat little apartment with a neat little bourgeois life. A neat little security on the edge of the abyss. Do you really see that? — Erich Maria Remarque

And even if these scenes from our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not. — Erich Maria Remarque

A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right — Erich Maria Remarque

Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights — Erich Maria Remarque

Love, he thought. That too is love. The old miracle. It not only casts a rainbow of dreams against the gray sky of facts - it also sheds romantic light upon a heap of dung - a miracle and a mad mockery. Suddenly he had the strange feeling of having become, in a remote way, an accomplice. — Erich Maria Remarque

The war has ruined us for everything. He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war. The — Erich Maria Remarque

One lost easiest what one held in one's arms - never what one left. — Erich Maria Remarque

When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind. — Erich Maria Remarque

Love should not be polluted with friendship. — Erich Maria Remarque

Am I jealous? he thought, astonished. Jealous of the chance object to which she has attached herself? Jealous of something that does not concern me? One can be jealous of a love that has turned away, but not of that to which it has turned. — Erich Maria Remarque

We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. — Erich Maria Remarque