Wilfred Owen Quotes
Wilfred Owen Quotes
All a poet can do today is warn.
3108These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
2828 Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
3905 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.
3794 Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
1266 The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
3936 But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
1149 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.
4401 Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.
4310 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.
2572 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.
2893 You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears:You are not worth their merriment.
3374 Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling.
3285 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.
4433 These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
1513 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.
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