Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from Mother Courage and Her Children.
Society and Class Quotes
RECRUITER: How can you muster a unit in a place like this? I've been thinking about suicide, sergeant. Here am I, got to find our commander four companies before the twelfth of the month, and peopl...
Wealth Quotes
MOTHER COURAGE: Courage is the name they gave me because I was scared of going broke, sergeant, so I drove me cart right through the bombardment of Riga with fifty loaves of bread aboard. They were...
Warfare Quotes
MOTHER COURAGE: He's nowt but a child. You want to take him off to slaughterhouse, I know you lot. They'll give you five florins for him. (I, 182-184)
Religion Quotes
THE CHAPLAIN: […] when Our Lord turned the five loaves into five hundred there was no war on and he could tell people to love their neighbours as they had enough to eat. Today it's another story....
Innocence Quotes
MOTHER COURAGE: […] to Kattrin: 'Tain't your fault, you can't speak, I know. (I, 335)
Rules and Order Quotes
SERGEANT: […] Takes a war to get proper nominal rolls and inventories—shoes in bundles and corn in bags, and man and beast properly numbered and carted off, cause it stand to reason: no order,...
Power Quotes
RECRUITER: How can you muster a unit in a place like this? I've been thinking about suicide, sergeant. Here am I, got to find our commander four companies before the twelfth of the month, and peopl...
Principles Quotes
RECRUITER: How can you muster a unit in a place like this? […] No notion of word of honour, loyalty, faith, sense of duty. This place has shattered my confidence in the human race, sergeant. (I,...