The Radetzky March Quotes
"The fighting had been raging for half an hour."
"Fate had elected him for a special deed."
"He never shot without aiming, and his every last bullet struck home."
"Terror at the inconceivable, immeasurable catastrophe that would destroy Trotta, the regiment, the army, the state, the entire world drove burning chills through his body."
"It’s for children," his wife gently answered.
"He had been driven from the paradise of simple faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice."
"Despite the awkward heartiness of army brethren trying to bridge the gulf left by a sudden and incomprehensible destiny..."
"He read no books, Captain Trotta, and secretly pitied his growing son."
"Until one day, out of idle curiosity, he picked up the first reader assigned to his son."
"The major now vegetated as the unknown bearer of ephemeral fame, like a fleeting shadow that a secret object sends into the bright world of the living."
"He felt he had been sentenced to wear another man’s boots for life and walk across a slippery ground."
"The sergeant was lying in state by the time they arrived."
"The sun was nearing the hills, which were now as blue as the sky and barely distinguishable from clouds."
"The Hero of Solferino was dying once again and a time would come when an empty canvas would stare down upon the descendant even more mutely than the portrait."
"His father’s slumbering countenance swayed peacefully in the reddish twilight of the upholstery."
"Unconscious and appeased, his severity was slumbering too, embedded in the silent vertical furrow between nose and forehead, the way a storm sleeps in the jagged fissure between mountains."
"It’s raining," said his father, as if first noticing it now.
"The grave was still fresh: a tiny mound, a small temporary wooden cross, and a rain-drenched wreath of glass violets."
"The flesh buried in his memory was closer to him than the corpse beneath this mound."
"The rain caressed his parted hair with wet tenderness."
"She was beautiful. The Herr Baron knew her, didn’t you?"
"He knows everything, our doctor! He’s a bookworm."
"I am his grandson! I have no chance to save his life—unfortunately!"
"The days resembled one another like snowflakes."
"Death lay far away for a young cavalry lieutenant, as far as the highest grade of regulated advancement."
"Each was afraid to stay by himself, yet it was not possible for them to be together."
"They were grandsons, they were both grandsons."
"The crooked streets drove them together. They were trapped in the small town and in their great confusio"
"No one had the nerve to leave by himself or to take his neighbor along."
"They stood up, one by one, hesitant and shamefaced."
"Lieutenant Trotta had indeed not heard them."
"The lieutenant felt he could not possibly wait for the outcome of the affair before writing to the district captain."
"The blood of the Hero of Solferino rolled alive and red in the district captain’s veins."
"This letter was a dreadful interruption in the leisurely routine of weekly reports that all sounded alike."
"Now the lieutenant felt the worst was over."
"He saw the cold twinkling of the winter stars."
"Dr. Demant had six more hours to live, six big hours."
"The physician went to the tavern keeper, paid, came back in his overcoat."
"But his tongue lay heavy in his mouth, burdened by weights."
"Time did not stop; the clock kept endlessly stitching its seconds."
"At seven-twenty the grandson of that grandfather would be dead."
"Lieutenant Trotta followed the riding major."
"But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically."
"It was not without pity that the mounted comrades looked down at the foot soldiers."
"It was time Frau Demant asked him to sit."
"They were singing the Ukrainian song about the Emperor and the Empress."
"They had settled accounts, he was ready!"
"He saw the mournful sounds of their harmonicas and the singing."
"But he could not possibly have tracked down their degrees of kinship."
"The nation's insistence on their rights, a citizen is a citizen, no more privileges for the nobility."
"They still told the old jokes, but they no longer guffawed loudly; at most, they smiled."
"Lieutenant Trotta read the letter not without a sense of shame."
"He would have to pass an infantry training course, a bit tedious perhaps."
"The lieutenant slowly set out to perform his hard chore."
"He felt the sergeant’s heavy, clammy, loose handshake."
"The lieutenant’s eyes darted to her narrow white forehead."
"They heard the doorbell, then movement out in the hall."
"He pried the cap open with his penknife, curious and eager to play—a boy."
"The district captain avoided asking any questions."
"He wore a white high-necked waistcoat with gray buttons and a dove-gray morning coat."
"The sprinkler wagon, pulled by two lumbering brown horses, came rattling over the bumpy cobblestones."
"He did not doff his hat until he encountered Kronauer, the pharmacist."
"Of all the words that had lately become modern, he hated this one most of all—perhaps because it needed to change just a single tiny letter to turn into the most disgraceful word of all: revolution."
"But once the forsythia started blossoming on the railroad embankments, the count, like a migrant bird, would return to his ancestral homeland."
"The beat to which the riflemen marched was set by the bugler’s long, sober signal, not the haughty fanfare that marshaled, interrupted, and blared at the clattering hooves of the lancer horses."
"The soldiers drilled and shone in all the regulation colors."
"But they did possess a finely whetted, miraculous instinct for any and all secret and mysterious sources of money."
"They lived off other people’s work, but they also created work for others."
"In the isolated swampy bleakness of the garrison, one or another officer fell prey to despair, gambling, debts, and sinister men."
"The graveyards of border garrisons held many young corpses of weak men."
"The junior officers on duty read Colonel Kovacs’s announcement to the troops: Captain Count Tattenbach and Regimental Surgeon Dr. Demant had each died a soldier’s death for the honor of the regiment."
"As long as someone is up and about, you think he’s going to live forever."
"In reality they were spies or rebels, paid by the czar."
"No stranger than anything else I might do."
"The sun was so high in the heavens now that it filled the whole broad courtyard."
"I’m waiting for the priest, Herr Baron."
"It’s because he’s from over there. He’s been dead for a long time and he’s no longer used to riding around on the stones here."
"How much longer, how much longer? This era no longer wants us!"
"The world was cheerful, indoors and out."
"It’s not easy to do something about disturbances if your hands are tied as in this damn monarchy."
"It was a stern time, as we know. But it recognized exceptions and even liked them."
"The world worth living in was doomed. The world that would follow it deserved no decent inhabitants."
"She needed money and he was more manageable than a child."
"Blessed with constant youth, it dwelled in the middle of the aging body, a lovely secret in a ruinous castle."
"An army of awkward fools who tried to flutter with leaden wings."
"He looks old for his age, she thought, he’s experienced sad things, but he hasn’t grown any wiser."
"He felt the swift alternation of smooth coolness and equally smooth heat on her skin, the abrupt climatic changes that are among the enchanting manifestations of love."
"I’m old enough to be your mother! Guess my age."
"Lieutenant Trotta did not understand women who see old age approaching."
"He wondered what time it was, looked at his watch, and was already thinking up an excuse to avoid getting away too late."
"He felt extraordinarily sorry for himself, and at this moment it did him good to feel sorry for himself."
"Now he did in fact 'stop the fighting,' and the march-past was to begin."
"All at once, he felt as if an endless stretch of time had passed since his return from Vienna."
"He was going to the northeastern border. But the woman and the friend were going south."
"The world was no longer the old world. It was about to end."
"He yearned for Dr. Skowronnek, the man he had been playing chess with every afternoon for several months now."
"On the small chessboard their gaunt fingers sometimes bumped into one another like people in a small square, jerked back, and returned home."
"His entire knowledge of the world was based on the confessions of his female patients."
"He sensed that the time had come for the district captain to open up."
"Everything, everything in the world seemed meaningless."