Wilfred Owen Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All a poet can do today is warn.

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

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.

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.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.

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

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.