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

Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.

Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? That is long ago. We are old folk.

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