Quotes by Siegfried Sassoon

“But I've grown thoughtful now. And you have lost Your early-morning freshness of surprise At being so utterly mine: you've learned to fear The gloomy, stricken places in my soul, And the occasional...”

“I didn't want to die - not before I'd finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.”

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go." "The War Poems”

“I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.”

“Mute in that golden silence hung with green,Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyesRemembrance of all beauty that has been,And stillness from the pools of Paradise.”

“The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.”

“Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.”

“I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city.”

“The phrase "after-life" was also vaguely confused with going to church and not wanting to be dead - a perplexity which can be omitted from a narrative in which I am doing my best to confine myself ...”

“All the sanguine guesswork of youth is there, and the silliness; all the novelty of being alive and impressed by the urgency of tremendous trivialities.”

“All this, I suspect, has been little more than the operation known as the pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave, but I have had a comfortable feeling that, however ordinary my enterprises may hav...”

“Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.”

“I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.”

“Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell,...”

“Everyone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delightAs prisoned birds must find in freedom.”

“The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.”

“I must add that in the light of subsequent events it is difficult to believe that a Peace negotiated in 1917 would have been permanent. I share the general opinion that nothing on earth would have ...”

“I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.I am a soldier, c...”

“I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.I am not protesting against the condu...”

“Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell, While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke. He crouched and flinched, dizzy with gall...”