A hospital alone shows what war is.

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.

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

Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.

We have our dreams because without them we could not bear the truth.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.