Wilfred Owen Quotes

Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

All a poet can do today is warn.

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

I, too, saw God through mud - The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

If I have to be a soldier I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.

Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

Winter Song The browns, the olives, and the yellows died, And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide, And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed, Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed. From off your face, into the winds of winter, The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing; But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter, When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing, And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie: It is sweet and fitting that you should die for your country.

Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold.

Whatever mourns when many leave these shores: Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

The war affects me less than it ought. But I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.

I, too, saw God through mud

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

Walking abroad, one is the admiration of all little boys, and meets an approving glance from every eye of elderly.

After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.

Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears.

The marvel is that we did not all die of cold. As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could be got back, but I am not able to tell how many have ended up in hospital. We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death.

Strange friend,' I said,'here is no cause to mourn.' 'None,'said the other,'save the undone years, The hopelessness.Whatever hope is yours Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world.

Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's

Flying is the only active profession I could ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law

The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.

All the poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

Futility Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved -still warm -too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.

The centuries will burn rich loads With which we groaned, Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids, While songs are crooned: But they will not dream of us poor lads, Left in the ground.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Was it for this the clay grew tall?