Quotes by Erich Maria Remarque

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The less a man cares about his state of mind, the more valuable he is.

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If it were not for women, there would be no money, and men would be a tribe of heroes. In the new trenches we lived without women and it was not so important who and where he had an important property there was only one thing: what kind of soldier you are. I'm not advocating for the "glamour" of life in the trenches - I just want to put the love thing into perspective. It awakens in men the worst instincts - the passion to possess, to have a position in society, to have earnings and to have peace.

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In true love there is no room for the third.

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Love is wonderful. But anyway, one of the two always gets bored. And the other is left with nothing.

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Love is not a sister to friendship. The end is the end.

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Love knows no pride.

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Love is born in man, but it never ends in him. Although you have everything and someone by your side, and love and happiness and life, according to a terrible law, all this is always too little, and the more it seems, the less it really is.

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Love is the desire to pass on what you cannot keep.

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

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Any dictator starts with a simplification.

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A woman is not a metal piece of furniture, she is a flower. She does not want an active life. She needs tender and warm words. Better to say something nice to her every day than to work for her, always grumpy, a whole life.

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If the woman belongs to another, then she is five times more desirable than the one you can have; this is a law.

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Money means freedom forged in gold.

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Never undertake any difficult maneuvers if it is possible to achieve that by easier methods. This is one of the wisest rules of life. Applying it, however, is very difficult. Msi chosen for the intelligent and romantic.

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In life you have to know how to lose. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be able to live.

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The man prone to great feelings usually lies to himself and to others.

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Man lives 75% with fantasies and only 25% with facts, in this lies his strength and weakness.

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You will find out the real character of a man only when he becomes your boss.

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He who has no home can go wherever he wants.

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In hard times, naivety is the most precious treasure, it's an enchanted cloak that hides the dangers towards which the smart one is heading like a hypnotist.

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Only the fool wins in life, the smart sees too many obstacles ahead and loses confidence, failing to even begin to do something.

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You cannot overcome the suffering of love through philosophy, but only with the help of another woman.

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People who think they are deep are shallow.

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It's no shame to be born stupid, it's a shame to die stupid.

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Only he who has lost everything he could live for is free.

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A man's death is a death; the death of two million people is just a statistic.

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The guilty are usually not reproached by their conscience.

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Money spoils your character.

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Money is a very important thing. Especially when you don't have them.

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All love wants to be eternal.

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In small towns, people suffer from suppressed desires. That is, in small towns without brothels.

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Empty space in time. The room, this lighted little chamber, is the same as before - and here is the only person he loves again, and somehow he is not the same anymore, he could hold her, he would only have to hold out his arm, but for him, and already forever out of reach.

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It was as if some shapeless, gray despondency, something even sadder than sorrow, had asked for it - a distant, nameless memory, a wind-blown, endless wave to claim back what it had once cast out on a forgotten island - the tiny humanity, light and idea.

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Otherwise, this is also a lie - we never receive anything as a gift; respite at most, like this, but what can we expect? After all, everything is just a reprieve, a gracious reprieve, a multicolored flag in front of the distant but relentlessly approaching dark gate.

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Those who expect nothing cannot be disappointed.

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Isn't beauty always right? And his excuse for everything in the world?

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Everything has been decided a long time ago, as always. At most, we don't know about it, and we confuse the spectacular final scene with the decision, which was already made silently, months before.

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No need for explanations. All explanations are so second-rate. There is no explanation in emotions anyway. You can only act.

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Once upon a time, somewhere in the sea, say, in the Bay of Capri, there was a wave that fell in love with the rock. He always curled around her, kissed her day and night, hugged her with his white soft arms. He sighed, sobbed, begged to be hers, and besieged her with his love until he slowly washed away the rock's resistance, and one fine day, unable to take it any longer, the rock gave way and collapsed into the arms of the wave. (...) And then the rock, the admired, adored, so coveted rock, no longer existed. A piece of stone was just lying in the depths, on the seabed. The wave felt that it had been cheated, that it had been taken, and soon it was looking for another rock for itself.

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There have never been more false prophets, more lies, more death, more destruction and more tears than in our century, the twentieth, the century of progress, technology, civilization, mass culture and mass murder.

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If we don't wish for too much: everything is a gift.

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We can talk as long as we want. That will only make the confusion even bigger. There are things that cannot be explained. And others that cannot even be understood.

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The usual phrases about friendship. A small vegetable garden on the lava ground of cooled feelings. (...) Love should not be soiled with friendship. If it's over, so be it.

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Man is always alone and never alone. The memories are coming. The hum of a violin from the twilight - in some garden, on a hilltop above Budapest. The deep scent of chestnut trees. The wind. Dreams settle on one's shoulder like young owls, their eyes glistening in the semi-darkness. A twilight that stretches endlessly into the night.

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Time is a very weak potion of death that is slowly dosed to us like some harmless poison. In the beginning, it invigorates us and even makes us believe that we are almost immortal, but when it gets stronger day by day, drop by drop, it turns into acid, which makes our blood cloudy and dissolves it. Even if we wanted to try to buy back our youth with our remaining years, we couldn't: the acid of time has changed us, our chemical composition is no longer the same, so a miracle would have to happen.

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Hate is acid that eats away at the soul, it doesn't matter whether you hate yourself or are hated.

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There can only be a good end to what was continuously bad before. Then it's better if something only ends badly.

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Nothing is ever permanent, neither mine nor yours, and most of all ours.

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Our memory is not an ivory case in a dust-free museum, but an animal that lives and eats and digests. It devours itself, like the proverbial phoenix, so that we can continue to live and not perish because of it.

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If we can no longer behave like children, then we are old.

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You know what else only man knows? That he must die. He got imagination as an antidote.

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I'm forty years old, I went to school, I studied and pondered, I gained knowledge and experience, refined through the filter of passions, hardened through the anvil of experiences, every year I became colder and more brittle - I didn't believe in anything anymore, and it didn't occur to me that I could ever be so naive again, but no. nothing used, experience does not hold back, knowledge does not sober up - the fire of passion chews its way through cynicism like dry wood that has been rotting for years.

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We are probably all somewhat afraid of big words. They have lied so terribly many times. Maybe we are also afraid of our feelings. We don't trust them anymore. (...) They are still needed. Otherwise, how could one live?

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Certainty never hurts. Only what comes before and after.

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Who are we? Who are you, who am I, who are the others, and who are those who are no more? Which is real: the reflection or the person standing in front of the mirror? The living or the memory, the image that no longer hurts?

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Yesterday is gone, no tears, no magic to bring it back.

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Imagination (...) only needs a nail to hang its rainbow-colored veil. It doesn't matter if it's a golden nail or just rusty iron! If the veil gets caught in it, it is equally caught.

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It's easy for you, you're alone, Hasse said. There was some truth in this: those who lived alone could not be left behind. But sometimes in the evening the whole artificial structure collapsed, life wailed like plaintive and driven music, it became a vortex of wild desires, unbridled wishes, gloom, and the hope that we would tear ourselves away from this senseless madness, from this eternally squealing stupid verklizo, no matter what happens next ... is there anything at all besides loneliness? I closed the window. No, there is nothing! There is not enough ground under our feet for the rest.

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All love carries with it the desire for eternity, and that is why it becomes eternally tormenting. Because nothing remains of it. Nothing.

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He drank a lot, the backdrops of consciousness moved from their places, the rattling chain of time snapped, and at this time memories and dreams gathered around him fearlessly.

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We are sparks and we don't know where the wind blows us.

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Before that, there were many things... security, background, faith, goals... all friendly places where I could always find my feet when love shook me. Today I have nothing... at most I have some despair, a little courage, and otherwise everything is foreign, outside, inside. When love falls on it, it is like a plume in dry straw. When you have nothing left but this, then it is also different... wilder, more important and more destructive than it was before.

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Something is chasing me. It's like I'm always missing something. I track it down, I get it, and then it turns out that there was nothing. And I'm after something else again. I know in advance that it will end the same as the other one, but I can't let it go. It chases, pursues, then occupies you for a while, but leaves you again, and emptiness remains; it's like hunger, it always catches up again.

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Fate couldn't have been stronger than the indifferent bravery stacked against him. A person can kill himself at any time if his fate becomes absolutely unbearable. It was good to know that, but it was also good to know that nothing is lost as long as he lives.

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It's good to talk if happiness is behind the speech, if the word flows easily and lively, but what can such a changeable, easily misunderstood thing like the word help, if a person is unlucky? It only adds to the trouble.

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The fetus. After all, a groping life grows blindly in this decaying body. They have a common fate. Emez is still feeding, heart is greedy, only the instinct of growth drives him to become something, no matter what, engineer, priest, soldier, murderer, man, whatever, but he wants to live, suffering and happy and broken - the instrument moved carefully towards the invisible along the wall - until he found resistance, he carefully broke through there - to highlight now - it's over. An end to the unconscious circulation, an end to the breath that has never been taken, exultation, complaint, growth, what is to come. Just a pale, lifeless piece of flesh and a little dripping blood.

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Cynics are the best characters, idealists are the least tolerable. Pious people are so rarely capable of understanding.

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Very loud? What can be very loud? Only silence. The motionless silence in which you explode, like in a vacuum.

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There is a defense against offense; there is nothing against sympathy.

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He knew that certain social classes were always the same for centuries. But he also knew the signs of feverish decay and decadence. Lumpy sensuality; bred and protected weakness; helpless mockery; cleverness without purpose; selfishness; tired blood, which continues in small adventures, petty greed, polished rudeness, superficial culture and sluggish boredom. The ruling class. It is certain that these will not save or redeem the world.

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You wouldn't believe what you can forget. It's a great blessing and a hell of a misery.

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Life is much bigger than that, and it cannot end until we take our last breath.

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Lying somewhere in a field. Birch trees. White summer clouds. The blue sky of youth. What has become of the adventurous heart? He was killed by the harsh adventures of life.

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Comforting nothings. Water, breathing, evening rains. They are also known only to those who are lonely.

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The waste! Oh, the old French fear! What are you saving? Haven't you experienced that it doesn't help people?

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To forget. What a word. Terrible, comforting and spooky! Is it possible to live without forgetting? But who can forget enough? The dross of memory crushes the heart. Only those who have nothing left of what they lived for can truly be free.

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It was beautiful, like a meadow when the wind blows through it. Life throbbed in him... The old, incomprehensible, unsolvable riddle. The tiny seed already contains the whole tree, rooted, leafy, and crowned, as it will blossom on a beautiful April day. From a night of love, from a drop of plasma, these two shoulders, these eyes, this face, and yet another miracle, that I had to meet him out of millions of beings... That drop of plasma was already destined to come to me years later .

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The oldest human question: why. Until now, all kinds of logic, all philosophy and science have been shipwrecked on this question.

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It wouldn't change anything. They would just lie to each other. They would look at that pitiful stained crystal together and lie to each other that it was shining.

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He felt that all this - not reality. He read it in a book, saw it in the cinema, or just dreams.

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I am happy and I want you to be happy too. I am perfectly happy. I wake up with you and go to sleep with you. I don't know anything else. My head is like silver when I think of us, other times it's like a violin. Every street is full of us, it's like music, sometimes other people are talking, and images flash like in a movie, but the music is still there. Always.

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He knew that there were more beautiful faces, nobler faces, purer faces - but this one face affected him and dominated him. This is one face in the whole world. And he himself endowed him with this power.

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Wine cannot be put away, preserved, because it will break, it will become vinegar, bitter, like old love, when it has passed, but we want to force it.

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We are exceptions! You are the spring - you are Budapest, where every able-bodied person walks on the banks of the Danube on hot evenings, in the silver moonlight, in the fragrance of blooming chestnut trees.

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Love is not a lake in which you can always see your reflection, Joan. Love is a rough sea. There is an ebb and flow. It has sunken ships and even sunken cities, octopuses, corals and heavy iron chests with cute treasures.

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What one does not get always seems better than what one has. Therein lies the romance and stupidity of human existence.

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When two people love each other, it is more important than anything, it is a miracle and the most natural thing in this world. This is what I felt today, when the night suddenly turned into a blooming bush and the wind smelled of strawberries, and I realized that without love, we can only be free dead, some data, and a random name, and nothing more, we can even die.

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We didn't part like last time. The girl was standing in the gate, the light of the street lamp shining on her face. It was beautiful. (...) A strange feeling came over him. It's not like other times, when a man will go crazy for a girl if he has to part with her in the evening. Rather, I felt beauty. Tenderness and unspeakable desire.

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It's good that we have dreams, because without them reality would be unbearable. We can also deceive ourselves with reality. That is an even more dangerous dream.

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Everything turns colorful at night. Nothing is difficult, we believe that we can overcome everything, and dreams replace the unattainable.

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Regret is the most useless thing in this world. You can't bring anything back. If we could, we would all be saints. Life was not intended to mold us to perfection.

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Anyone who looks back a lot will easily run into something or fall into the abyss.

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You will never grow old. Life will slowly pass over your face, that will be it, nothing more, and you will be even more beautiful because of it. Only those who no longer feel anything are old.

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There are no inaccessible islands. And the restless heart knows no bounds; it is easiest to lose what you hold in your arms, never what you have left somewhere.

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Life has no content - you can't just throw it away like a fired cartridge! Perhaps it will still be useful in combat when the time comes and it will be needed.

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Everyone has only one life; it is worthless and the greatest value, you can throw it away if you want, it is not difficult either. Yes, but maybe revenge will also be lost along with it, and everything that, even though they were mocked, spat on, ridiculed every day and at every hour, but which even then, despite everything, is roughly called: faith in humanity and humanity.

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To forget is easy, while the lamp of will shines above the world; but when the light goes out and the gnashing of worms is heard, when the destroyed world, like the sunken Vineta, rises again from the waves and springs to new life - then everything is quite different.

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Happiness lies at our feet. You just have to bend down for it.

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One Week. An eternity for someone who is truly unhappy. I was so unhappy, through and through, with every bit of it, that it was all gone in a week. My hair was also unhappy, my skin, my bed, even my clothes. I was so full of unhappiness that nothing existed outside of it. And when nothing else exists, unhappiness slowly ceases because there is nothing to compare it to. And then comes complete exhaustion. Then it goes away too. And you slowly come back to life.

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All the misery in the world lies in the fact that we never feel what we cause to others.

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I fear the passing night. Words spoken in the dark - how could they be true? The true word is born in light.

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If you want something, never ask what the consequences will be. Or don't do it.

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He wasn't paying attention and was already entangled in the web of habit. Habit has many names - love is just one of many.

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He felt that something was expanding, spreading inside him, warm, soft and shoreless, and this something was pulling him down to him with countless hands; suddenly he felt unbearable that they were standing here next to each other, balancing on the narrow plane of their soles, standing ridiculously upright, instead of forgetting everything and falling down and giving in at last to the sobbing wishes of their skin, to what was calling them from the depths of past millennia, from where there was nothing yet, no thought, no question, no pain, no doubt - there was only the dark bliss of blood.

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Grief is one thing, and living life is another. The one who meanwhile sees and acknowledges the reality of life does not mourn any less.

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How do you deal with that word! Ravic mused. - Use it like an empty plate without a second thought. What fills him with, he calls love. You can fill it with everything! There was already a fear of loneliness, another exciting self, increased self-confidence, the glittering reflections of fantasy! But who knows which one is real?

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To live is to live others. We all eat each other. If the possibility of a little kindness sometimes shines somewhere, let's not deny ourselves. It gives strength for difficult times.

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Loneliness is the eternal refrain of life. It is neither worse nor better than others, they just waste more words on it. Everyone is lonely, and no one is quite.

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This world is crazy: you can turn into an archangel, you can go crazy or you can become any kind of villain, no one sees it. But if you're missing just one button... everyone will notice right away.

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Only when I see my grandchildren's behavior do I know exactly if I raised my children well.

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Only fools triumph in life; the others think they will discover too many obstacles and become insecure at the very beginning. In difficult times, single-mindedness is the greatest treasure, like a magic cloak it hides the dangers into which the exceedingly clever rush almost under a spell.

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Only those who are left alone again and again can truly know the happiness of being together. Everything else disturbs the mystery of the tension. And what else can draw you more powerfully into the magical realm of solitude than the full experience of stirred emotions, shock.

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Little by little, everything was filled with light and meaning. The uncertainty dissipated, the words came out by themselves, and I didn't even care so much about what I said. (...) I was listening to my own voice, but as if it wasn't me anymore, as if someone else was speaking, the certain someone I wanted to become. The words no longer covered reality, they shifted, they slipped into other, more colorful areas - not in which the small events of my life took place - and I knew that they were no longer telling the truth, that they were becoming imagination and lies, but I didn't care, since the truth was inconsolable and dull, and only emotion, only the reflection of dreams expressed real life.

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We can never be separated enough, we can never be far enough away from each other to find each other again.

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She sat silently beside me; lights and shadows cast on his face through the window. Sometimes I looked at him and remembered the first night I met him. Her face was more serious now, a little stranger than just now, but very beautiful - yes, that was the face that grabbed me then and hasn't let go since. It hinted at some quiet secret.

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Never want to know more than you have to! (...) The less one knows, the more carefree one lives. Knowledge makes you free - but also unhappy.

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Human life is too long for love. (...) One always takes too long. And the other one stays put, then just sits and stares in front of him. He stares like he's failed.

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What is good should never be rejected. Even if you don't know why you get it.

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I reassure myself that it is better to die when you still want to live than when you want to die. (...) If a person still wants to live, then there is something that he loves. This makes it difficult, but also makes it easier. Look, I must die anyway, and now I'm grateful to fate that you were mine. After all, I could have been left to myself, I could have been unhappy. Then I would rather die. Of course, it's harder that way. On the other hand, I am full of love like the bee is full of honey when she returns to the hive in the evening. And if I had to choose between the two options, I would only choose this one.

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What a person lets close to his body, he also wants to keep. And you can't keep anything.

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I can't end love. Failure makes me sad. (...) The secret of love that begins in us, but does not end in us. The mysterious way in which all of this can be present at the same time: man, love, happiness, life... and how this is always so terribly little, and the more it seems, the less it becomes.

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Sweet words. Deceptive soothing balm. Help, love, togetherness, return - words, sweet words. One word at a time, nothing more. There are so many words for what is so simple: the wild, terrifying magic of two bodies! What a rainbow of fantasy, lies, feelings and self-deception arcs above him! Behold, here he stands on the night of farewell, calm, in the dark, let the rain of sweet words fall, when in fact all the words mean the same thing: farewell, farewell, farewell. If you have to talk about it, it's over anyway.

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A stranger, as the person we once loved can be, (...) like the light of the stars; but in vain, that light is already dead. It excites, but does not ignite - the flow from one to the other has stopped.

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A woman must be loved or left. There is no middle ground.

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We are not youth anymore. We don't want to besiege the world anymore. We are refugees. We run away from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old and began to love the world and life; and we had to shoot him.

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I always thought that all people were against war. Then I realized that some people don't, but they don't have to go there.

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Those who are unlucky also break their finger while picking their nose.

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I feel it in every part of me, I have completely changed, I see differently, I breathe differently than before. I live even in my dreams, my ankles and wrists move differently, I can hold hands and I look forward to tomorrow with joy, because I know what I want, my life has a purpose again. I also regret what you say about this, what you think of me! The main thing is that my wings have grown and I can fly. How could I throw myself into this happiness without a second thought! I'm not careful, I'm not afraid, I don't care about anything, not even that you're just playing with me and making fun of me.

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- What we forget will be missed in our lives later, sir. (...) - True. And what we don't forget makes life hell.

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Help if you can; do your best while you can - but if you can't do anything else, forget it!

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- It's night time. Only the clock is ticking. (...) - Yet everything happens at night. Or maybe that's why. - Does it happen every night? - At night. But it only becomes visible during the day. (...) - Do you think that all sorts of things happen to us while we sleep? - That.

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It is easy to forget while the searchlights of the will are shining, but in the hours of rest, in the hours of exhaustion, the ghosts are stronger.

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Love undermines one's character.

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Only things that are not worn with self-consciousness are seen as cheap, shoddy things.

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Do everything you can do. Help your comrades, sacrifice yourself for them. But if you don't know anything anymore, forget what happened. Turn around, shake yourself up. Condolences are a beautiful thing, but they are for quieter times. If they fall right and left by you, forget (...) and enjoy life. The facts must be accepted. That's the only way to survive something like this.

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We got as close as two people can get - and yet, mysteriously, sometimes everything turned dark and agonizing. (...) I couldn't get out of the wave circles of existence, which ring in and around us, which impose their laws on us, (...) the flashing sensual disappointment: the simultaneous merging of possession and loss.

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Man is evil and only believes in good deeds if others do them.

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A person's life consists of emotions; and the truth doesn't matter next to emotions.

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How much suffering can fit in two small places that a person can cover with a finger: two eyes.

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Who wants to understand anything? All the misunderstandings in the world come from it.

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It doesn't matter where we live (...). You may be more comfortable here or there, but that's never the point. The only important thing is how we make our lives.

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A person is great in his decisions, but he is weaker in execution. Therein lies all our misery, and it is our attraction.

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Nothing is repeated. We are repeating ourselves, that's all.

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Surviving, that's the most important thing now, until the goal becomes visible again.

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It's interesting how much you think while you're on the road. And how little, once it arrives.

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It's a strange thing with books (...). They can't replace everything, of course, but they can reach depths like nothing else.

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Love is not a shop to claim back what you have invested in the business.

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You won't stay with me. The window cannot be closed. Nor the water of the stream. If they do try, after a while both will be spoiled.

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The rain thickened into a shimmering silvery curtain. The bushes were fragrant. The earth steamed heavily and gratefully. (...) The night only existed, it poured its rain from the stars, mysteriously and fruitfully besieged the rows of trees and groves of the stone city, millions of flowers opened their colorful pubes to receive them, branches awaited them with open arms, and the water pushed into the ground to there, mixed into black pulp, it will unite with the millions of roots that await it; the rain, the night, the nature, the growth, everything existed and whistled for destruction, death, evildoers, false saints, victory or defeat, they were all; like year after year, since forever, and on this night he could finally be a part of everything, the shell burst open, his limbs were stretched by life, the coveted and blessed life!

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Something must remain (...), an anchor that holds and does not allow to perish, and pulls the person back.

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Everyone is probably kind to certain people. And for others, it's the opposite.

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Mercy is actually guilt. People want to impose everything that they wished for the dearly settled person during his lifetime. (...) One always remembers the few good qualities of the poor when it is too late. He is sensitive to the idea of ​​how noble-hearted he might have been, and as a result feels extremely virtuous. Virtue, goodness, nobility... - we demand these mainly from others.

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Tact is nothing more than a tacit agreement that we don't weed out each other's mistakes, but turn a blind eye to them.

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Music had magic. (...) It expanded everything and made it colorful, as if the dark river of life was roaring in it, there were no more burdens or boundaries, there was nothing but light, melody and love.

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- I remember you used to not like someone watching you while you slept. - I really didn't like it in the past... but lately it happens that I'm afraid to be alone. (...) One is afraid that he will never return. - Yes... but the person returns and then it all goes away. Look at me! One always returns... even if not always to the same place.

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I suddenly realized that I mean something to a person, that even my mere presence means something to him, and that he is happy when I am by his side. It sounds a bit simple when you say it like that, but if you think about it, you realize that it's a really big deal that it's for life. It is a force that can tear a person apart and change them completely. In a word, love, but at the same time something else. Something to live for.

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I really wanted a child from you...I never wanted this before. I couldn't even imagine. But now I think about it often. About how good it is when something remains of a person. A child I would sometimes think of. (...) Maybe it's better that we don't have children. That I leave nothing behind, so you forget more easily. And if you still think of me sometimes, just think about how beautiful everything was.

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You know what I have no way of understanding? For two people to love each other as much as we do, and one of them has to die. (...) A person should only die if he is alone. Or if you hate the other. But not when he loves her.

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He turned his face towards me. He smiled, his mouth opened to a narrow slit, his teeth glistened, and he fixed his wide-open eyes on me. (...) I will never forget how she then leaned towards me, how her face became expressive, how she was surprised by the softness, the tenderness and the illuminating silence, as if she had blossomed - I will never forget how her lips shone towards me, how the his eyes to mine, how he looked at me questioningly, earnestly, wide open and glittering, and how he then closed his eyelashes as if surrendering.

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The most terrifying thing is time. Yes, it's time. The second we live and yet are not masters of.

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I watched Pat get dressed. I have never felt the mystery of a woman's eternal alienation as much as when I followed this silent pacing in front of the mirror, this pondering self-examination, this complete immersion in herself, this slip back into the unconscious instinctual world of the female sex. I could hardly imagine a woman getting dressed while chatting or laughing... and even if she did, she would surely have lacked the secret of eternal elusiveness and the charm that can never be deciphered.

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The easy floating is always brought about by unexpected things (...), which are already beyond what is necessary, unimportant and apparently useless things - and this is because they belong to that certain other side of existence, to the sunnier, to the indispensable , to the playful and dreamy. After the years spent near death, the wine is not just wine, the silver is not just silver, the music that crept into the room from somewhere is not just music, (...) all this became a symbol of another life, a life without murder and destruction, for life of real life, which is almost a legend, a vivid and hopeless daydream.

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How contingent time becomes as soon as it becomes past! It's comforting, terrifying, and reassuring all at the same time.

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In the sleeping person's ears, sometimes a swish sounds like thunder.

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Every soldier knows that the company commander is full of the best intentions in vain; if his subordinates want it, he is still powerless. Similarly, even the most superior-minded minister is always shipwrecked when the reactionary crowd of privy councilors turn against him.

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An inch of business is worth more than a kilometer of education.

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When you are on the run, desperate and in danger, you learn to believe in miracles. Otherwise, you wouldn't survive what you have to survive.

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The fugitive never gets rid of his fear of the police, not even in his sleep, not even when he has nothing to fear.

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A companion in the night - no matter how strange - can save a person from suicide.

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Losses were harder to bear if one had no homeland.

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If you can't do anything for the other person, feel free to eat your bread if you're hungry, before it's taken away from you. You never know when it will be taken.

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There was something good about unpleasant memories: they convinced you that you were happy, even though a second earlier you thought you weren't. Happiness is a matter of degrees. Those who know this are rarely completely unhappy.

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Comfortable social coexistence is based on tact towards each other.

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The world never seems more beautiful than the moment you are locked up.

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Don't you keep losing what you think is yours just because you're moving? And doesn't something only stand still when it no longer exists and when it can no longer change? Isn't it only then that one can truly own it?

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There is always something of a child in a woman, one cannot really be angry with her.

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A day or two spent alone at home will make a man who comes from the trenches very weak.

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There is no shame in being born stupid. Just to die stupidly.

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After a while, the persecuted will usually be smarter than the persecutors.

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The more primitive a person is, the better he thinks he is.

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Doubt and patience are the qualities of a cultured person.

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A wanderer should have adventures, but not something that will break his heart if he has to stand still.

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Everything becomes a habit! Not just our own death.

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Money doesn't like the light.

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Love pulls even the most worn-out bird back to its nest... for the benefit of the state and the joy of its followers.

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Perhaps the only reason why there is war again and again is because one person can never fully feel what the other is suffering.

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The misery of millions is too high a price for the heroism of a few.

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You can't change the world with words.

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Once the skirt gets in the way, the devil has taken away true camaraderie.

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Isn't that what everyone wants? Keeping what can't be? And get rid of what doesn't want to leave you?

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In case of danger, our vision changes - we do not see clearly with our eyes, but rather with our whole body. It's like seeing with your skin, especially at night. In such cases, we almost have the feeling that we can also see the skin, the role of the sense of hearing is also taken over by the skin. We open our mouths and listen, and it's as if our mouths also see and hear.

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There is more unhappiness in life than happiness. And that's why it's a pity that life doesn't last forever.

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Happiness. How it shrinks in memory! Like some cheap material in the wash. Only unhappiness can be counted.

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Remembrance is always also regret that the good we had had to be lost over time, and the bad did not get better.

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Where emotion fills everything, there is no room for time. One reaches the other side, beyond time.

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A judicial verdict is not required to destroy the embodiment of Evil.

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A person must always overcome the small injustices of everyday life, the smaller piece of bread, the more difficult work, so that he does not lose sight of the great injustice in his despair over them.

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The weight of everything increases almost to the point of unreality when one is a prisoner and receives only a few letters. An unintentional sentence, which if written under other circumstances would have meant nothing, can be a lightning bolt and destroy a man's life, just as another sentence can give warmth for weeks, although it was written just as unintentionally as the first. We can dwell for months on things that the writer of the letter forgot when he sealed the envelope.

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As little as we matter while in the camp, we suddenly become so valuable when we escape. While we're there, they even pity us for a piece of bread, but nothing is too expensive to get caught again. For this, even hundreds are mobilized.

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Necessity makes you precocious, and the clarity of youth is not disturbed by sentimentality or prejudice.

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Several people live in each of us. Different people. And sometimes they become independent, and they rule for a while, and the person becomes a different person, a person he did not know before. But then he turns back into his old self.

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Loneliness seeks companions and does not ask who the companion is. Anyone who doesn't know this has never been lonely, just single.

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Life would be unbearable if it lasted forever.

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The miracle, when you live it, is never perfect, only the memory makes it so, and if happiness is dead, it can no longer change, it cannot become a disappointment! It stays perfect.

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Nationalist uprisings are like when you pick up stones from the ground - worms emerge from them. Then they use big words to expose their audience.

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It is typical that when a person succumbs to panic, he believes that headlights are directed at him from all sides and that the world has nothing to do but look for him. He feels that every cell of his body wants to become independent, his legs are twitching, they want to provide themselves with room to move, his arms only want to defend and strike, his lips and mouth can only hold back the formed cry by trembling.

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As long as a person mocks and is afraid, he tries to make things seem smaller than they are.

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They are ten times longer apart than together.

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Religion also required many blood sacrifices during the dark ages. The moment he himself was no longer pursued, he began the pursuit, with stake, sword, and torture.

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The possibility of suicide is a grace of which one is rarely aware. It lends man the illusion of free will. And we probably commit suicide more often than we realize. We just don't know about it.

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Women don't need to be explained; they must be dealt with.

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Even the greatest uncertainty - if it does not lead to death - can lead to a certainty that cannot be shaken by anything.

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Small-bourgeois stagnation is a moral condition, not a geographical one.

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If a man exposes himself, he should not be surprised if he is shot at.

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In love, you always ask too many questions, and if you start really wanting to know the answers, the love will soon fade away.

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Fear of the unknown is one thing, and fear of what we already know is another. The unknown, even if it seems dangerous, is indeterminate, and the fear of it can be overcome with self-discipline or even with different tricks. But if one knows what is in front of him, discipline and psychological somersaults do not go far.

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You have to be a killer to be respected.