Matthew Lewellyn

“It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours’ bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down. In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips!”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Edgar Allan Poe