Quote

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

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Siegfried Sassoon
Age: 80 †
Born: 1886
Born: September 8
Died: 1967
Died: September 1
Military Personnel
Poet
Reporter
Writer
Matfield
Kent
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon
Saul Kain
Pinchbeck Lyre
Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon
Never
Soldier
Smug
Pray
Kindling
Laughter
Lad
Praying
Sneak
Youth
Faced
Hell
Cheer
Eye
March
Home
Crowds
Lads

More quotes by Siegfried Sassoon

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His wet white face and miserable eyesBrought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fellHis troubled voice: he did the business well.(First verse of Died of Wounds)
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Mud and rain and wretchedness and blood. Why should jolly soldier-boys complain? God made these before the roofless Flood - Mud and rain.
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And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
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But I've grown thoughtful now. And you have lost Your early-morning freshness of surprise At being so utterly mine: you've learned to fear The gloomy, stricken places in my soul, And the occasional ghosts that haunt my gaze.
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Life for the majority of the population. Is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds. Culminating in a cheap funeral.
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O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
Siegfried Sassoon
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I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
Siegfried Sassoon
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In the years 1910 and 1911 I had 51 innings with 10 not outs and an average of 19. This I consider a creditable record for a poet.
Siegfried Sassoon
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I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.
Siegfried Sassoon
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I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
Siegfried Sassoon
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I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
Siegfried Sassoon
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And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.
Siegfried Sassoon
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The dead...are more real than the living because they are complete.
Siegfried Sassoon
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Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
Siegfried Sassoon
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Soldiers are dreamers when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
Siegfried Sassoon
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In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Siegfried Sassoon
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And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts That drive them out to jabber among the trees.
Siegfried Sassoon
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Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans.
Siegfried Sassoon