Wilfred Owen quotes

Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose. (Wilfred Owen)
All a poet can do today is warn. View quote
Wilfred Owen
I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's. View quote
Wilfred Owen
If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable. View quote
Wilfred Owen
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. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote! View quote
Wilfred Owen
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours! View quote
Wilfred Owen
I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry? View quote
Wilfred Owen
Red lips are not so red; As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. View quote
Wilfred Owen
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. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. 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)
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith: 'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death. Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified, Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried. View quote
Wilfred Owen
He dropped, - more sullenly than wearily, Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat, And none of us could kick him to his feet; - Just blinked at my revolver, blearily; - Didn't appear to know a war was on, Or see the blasted trench at which he stared. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. View quote
Wilfred Owen
These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Bent double like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. View quote
Wilfred Owen
Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War. View quote
Wilfred Owen
All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want. (Wilfred Owen)
I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness. View quote
Wilfred Owen
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. View quote
Wilfred Owen
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. View quote
Wilfred Owen
The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head. View quote
Wilfred Owen