Quote

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

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Wilfred Owen
Age: 25 †
Born: 1893
Born: March 18
Died: 1918
Died: November 4
Poet
Writer
Oswestry
Shropshire
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
Owen
Everything
Poetry
Glorious
Landscapes
Broken
Landscape
Sights
Dead
Bodies
Vile
Call
Noise
Distortion
Language
Sight
Hideous
Execrable
Night
Universal
Unnatural
Blasted
Earth
Whose
Ugliness
Outs
Body
Outside
Foul
Noises

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

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I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.
Wilfred Owen
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I, too, saw God through mud
Wilfred Owen
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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
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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.
Wilfred Owen
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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
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The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
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Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.
Wilfred Owen
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And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
Wilfred Owen
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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
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Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Wilfred Owen
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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
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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
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All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.
Wilfred Owen
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I thought of all that worked dark pits Of war, and died Digging the rock where Death reputes Peace lies indeed.
Wilfred Owen
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Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.
Wilfred Owen