Wilfred Owen Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

All a poet can do today is warn. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

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

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! — Wilfred Owen

Move him into the sun-
gently its touch awoke him once, — Wilfred Owen

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells,
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes,
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
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. — Wilfred Owen

These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment. — Wilfred Owen

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

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad. — Wilfred Owen

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting. — Wilfred Owen

But let my death be memoried on this disc.
Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed.
But let thy heart-beat kiss it night and day,
Until the name grow vague and wear away. — Wilfred Owen

And you have fixed my life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

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

He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry — Wilfred Owen

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

And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

The dust that fell unnoted as a dew,
Wrapped the dead city's face like mummy-cloth — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

Shall they return to beating of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to village wells,
Up half-known roads. — Wilfred Owen

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 half the seed of Europe, one by one — Wilfred Owen

Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out. — Wilfred Owen

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

She is elegant rather than belle. — Wilfred Owen

My subject is war, and the pity of war. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

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

Some say God caught them even before they fell. — Wilfred Owen

I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair
But mocks the steady running of the hour
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here — Wilfred Owen

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

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

Consummation is consumption
We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume
All joys are cakes and vanish in eating
All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. — Wilfred Owen

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

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, - knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags. — Wilfred Owen

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's. — Wilfred Owen

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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. — Wilfred Owen

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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

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

There breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead. — Wilfred Owen

Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill. — Wilfred Owen

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. — Wilfred Owen

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