Erich Maria Remarque on enemies

We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

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.

Why do they never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony⁠—. Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

John F. Kennedy1917–1963

• Forgiveness

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Drift-wood. QuoteInvestigator (Aug. 19, 2019)

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

William Blake1757–1827Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 4, plate 91, line 1

• Forgiveness
• Friendship