A Farewell to Arms quotes about war aftermath

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

I was going to forget the war. I had made a separate peace.

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.

You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

“Let’s drop the war.” “It’s very hard. There’s no place to drop it.”

What is defeat? You go home.

War is not won by victory. What if we take San Gabriele? What if we take the Carso and Monfalcone and Trieste? Where are we then?

He was a legitimate hero who bored every one he met.

We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.

“He was probably a coward,” she said. “He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.”

The war seemed as far away as the football games of some one else’s college.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There isn’t always an explanation for everything.”

Well, I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me.

There are some people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers. It is with them that war is made.

I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died.

They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start.

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.

“If everybody would not attack the war would be over,” Manera said.

“They may crack,” she said. “Anybody may crack.”

“No,” I said. “I was blown up while we were eating cheese.”