Quote

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

Wilfred Owen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wilfred Owen
Age: 25 †
Born: 1893
Born: March 18
Died: 1918
Died: November 4
Poet
Writer
Oswestry
Shropshire
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
Owen
Must
Good
Unthinkable
Soldier
Historical
Else
Anything

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.
Wilfred Owen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
Wilfred Owen
Image
Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
Wilfred Owen
Image
The marvel is that we did not all die of cold. As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could be got back, but I am not able to tell how many have ended up in hospital. We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death.
Wilfred Owen
Image
Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.
Wilfred Owen
Image
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
Image
My subject is war, and the pity of war.
Wilfred Owen
Image
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.
Wilfred Owen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Wilfred Owen
Image
Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.
Wilfred Owen
Image
Heart, you were never hot Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot
Wilfred Owen
Image
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
Image
Flying is the only active profession I could ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.
Wilfred Owen