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

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
Good
Unthinkable
Soldier
Historical
Else
Anything
Must

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

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No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.
Wilfred Owen
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Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
Wilfred Owen
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Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.
Wilfred Owen
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I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law
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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.
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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.
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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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.
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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Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.
Wilfred Owen
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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.
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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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.
Wilfred Owen
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For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping may something have been left, Which must die now.
Wilfred Owen
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The war affects me less than it ought. But I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.
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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Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
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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All a poet can do today is warn.
Wilfred Owen
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Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here the thing's best left at home with friends.
Wilfred Owen