Quotes by Wilfred Owen

About Wilfred Owen:

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 o...

Wilfred Owen

Consummation is consumption. We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume. All joys are cakes and vanish in eating. All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth.

Wilfred Owen

What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Wilfred Owen

Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

Wilfred Owen

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

Wilfred Owen

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

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

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 ...

Wilfred Owen

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

These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

Wilfred Owen

What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the ch...

Wilfred Owen

He's lost his colour very far from here, Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry

Wilfred Owen

Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.

Wilfred Owen

But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

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.

Wilfred Owen

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

Wilfred Owen

Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.

Wilfred Owen

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

Wilfred Owen

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's.

Wilfred Owen

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

Wilfred Owen

Author Bio

  • NameWilfred Owen
  • DescriptionEnglish poet and soldier (1893-1918)
  • BornMarch 18, 1893
  • DiedNovember 4, 1918
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • AwardsMilitary Cross