Wilfred Owen Quotations

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

Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!

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

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

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

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

Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

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

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

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

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

Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.

All a poet can do today is warn.

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.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

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

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

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

Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do

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.

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

My arms have mutinied against me brutes!My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.

Now rather thank I God there is no riskOf gravers scoring it with florid screed.Let my inscription be this soldier's disc.Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed.But may thy heart-beat kiss it, night and day,Until the name grow blurred and fade away.

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.

I don't ask myself, Is the life congenial to me? but, Am I fitted for,am I called to, the Ministry?

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.

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the truest poets must be truthful.

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,May creep back, silent, to still village wellsUp half-known roads.

The isolation from any whose interests are the same as mine, the constant, inevitable mixing with persons whose influence will tend in the opposite direction-this is a serious drawback.

Behold,A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.But the old man would not so, but slew his son...

And in the happy no-time of his sleeping/ Death took him by the heart.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I, too, saw God through mud

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.

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

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.

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

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.

Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.

The old happiness is unreturning. Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning. Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.

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.

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

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

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.

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

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

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.

The Young Soldier It is not death Without hereafter To one in dearth Of life and its laughter, Nor the sweet murder Dealt slow and even Unto the martyr Smiling at heaven: It is the smile Faint as a (waning) myth, Faint, and exceeding small On a boy's murdered mouth.

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

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

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

For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping may something have been left, Which must die now.

Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here the thing's best left at home with friends.

I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; Heard music in the silentness of duty; Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death.

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.

I tried to peg out soldierly,--no use! One dies of war like any old disease.

Heart, you were never hot Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot

And some cease feeling Even themselves or for themselves. Dullness best solves The tease and doubt of shelling

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest, To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

I thought of all that worked dark pits Of war, and died Digging the rock where Death reputes Peace lies indeed.

And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan. And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further, Showed me its feet, the feet of many men, And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.

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

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.

It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

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

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.

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 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.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.