Status Updates From The Road Back

Another treasure from Erich Maria Remarque. His use of language is just stunningly beautiful while the story was simultaneously heart breaking and also inspiring.

“Should I tell you that all learning, all culture, all science is nothing but hideous mockery, so long as mankind makes war in the name of God and humanity with gas, iron, explosive and fire?”

"No, Georg," says Ludwig, "that's not it. We made revolution with too little hate, that's the whole fact of the matter; we wanted to be just to everybody from the very jump, and with the result that the whole thing has fizzled out. A revolution must first rage like a bush fire; then afterwards one can start in with the sowing. But we wanted to destroy nothing and yet to start afresh.

"So that is love," thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we packed up our things; "so that is the love my books at home were so full of—of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!"