Wilfred Owen Quotes (50 Quotes)


    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.


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

    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.

    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.


    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.

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

    No alarms
    Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste --
    Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
    The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.

    Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing-bells for these who die as cattle Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries 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 good-byes. 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.

    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.

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


    It is not death
    Without hereafter
    To one in dearth
    Of life and its laughter,

    For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
    Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
    For love of God seems dying.

    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.

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

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


    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.

    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!

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


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

    The Dead-Beat He dropped, more sullenly than wearily, Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat, And none of us could kick him to his feet Just blinked at my revolver, blearily Didn't appear to know a war was on, Or see the blasted trench at which he stared. 'I'll do 'em in,' he whined, 'if this hand's spared, I'll murder them, I will.' A low voice said, 'It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees his pluck's all gone, Dreaming of all the valiant, that aren't dead Bold uncles, smiling ministerially Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun In some new home, improved materially. It's not these stiffs have crazed him nor the Hun.' We sent him down at last, out of the way. Unwounded - stout lad, too, before that strafe. Malingering Stretcher-bearers winked, 'Not half' Next day I heard the Doc.'s well-whiskied laugh 'That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray'

    All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.


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

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

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

    Sonnet To a Child Sweet is your antique body, not yet young Beauty withheld from youth that looks for youth Fair only for your father. Dear among Masters in art. To all men else uncouth Save me, who know your smile comes very old, Learnt of the happy dead that laughed with gods For earlier suns than ours have lent you gold Sly fauns and trees have given you jigs and nods. But soon your heart, hot-beating like a bird's, Shall slow down. Youth shall lop your hair And you must learn wry meanings in our words. Your smile shall dull, because too keen aware And when for hopes your hand shall be uncurled, Your eyes shall close, being open to the world.


    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.

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

    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.

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



    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.

    What passing-bells, for these who die as cattle Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.


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

    Shall Life renew these bodies Of a truthAll death will he annul, all tears assuageOr fill these void veins full again with youthAnd wash with an immortal water age

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

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

    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.

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

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

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

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

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


    More Wilfred Owen Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Literature - War & Peace - Poetry - Home - Friendship - Poets - Smiling - Life - Death & Dying - Medicine & Medical - Education - Laughter - Happiness - Snow - Enemy - Sadness - Soldiers - Love - Art - View All Wilfred Owen Quotations

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