Quotes from Wilfred Owen

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

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

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.

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

O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

You shall not hear their mirth: You shall not come to think them well content By any jest of mine. These men are worth Your tears:You are not worth their merriment.

For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping may something have been left, Which must die now.

I am marooned on a Crag of Superiority in an ocean of soldiers.

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law

All a poet can do today is warn.

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

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

Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

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.

Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.

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.

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

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

All theological lore is growing distasteful to me. All my recent excursions into such fields proves it to be a shifting, hypothetical, doubt-fostering, dusty, and unprofitable study.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death... The marvel is we did not all die of cold.

The centuries will burn rich loads With which we groaned, Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids, While songs are crooned: But they will not dream of us poor lads, Left in the ground.