All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel

In himself man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread with a little decorum.

remonstrance.

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and re

At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognized that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill.

We young men of twenty, however, have only our parents, and some, perhaps, a girl—that is not much, for at our age the influence of parents is at its weakest and girls have not yet got a hold over

We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good boots are scarce.