Literary Birthday – 22 June – Erich Maria Remarque

Seven Quotes

1. A hospital alone shows what war is.
2. It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.
3. I would like to tell you in a few sentences what I think of the war, but I can’t. I think there is no reason in the whole world for any war, think what you will.
4. Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.
5. Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying – a little shove toward the end.
6. To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There’s much too little forgetting.
7. If things went according to the death notices, man would be absolutely perfect.  There you find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish, self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, businessmen in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi would seem an infinite egoist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers – in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one’s having been aware of it.

Erich Maria Remarque was a German author. He is best known for his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

by Amanda Patterson

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