Siegfried Sassoon Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Change, Years, Personality

  64 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Cheer, Laughter, Home

  Siegfried Sassoon (1983). “Siegfried Sassoon's long journey: selections from the Sherston memoirs”, Oxford University Press, USA

  30 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Party, Believe, Evil

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston”

  31 Copy quote

• The dead...are more real than the living because they are complete.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Real

  "Siegfried Sassoon's long journey: selections from the Sherston memoirs".

  33 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  War, Fighting, Men

  Siegfried Sassoon (1983). “Siegfried Sassoon's long journey: selections from the Sherston memoirs”, Oxford University Press, USA

  20 Copy quote

• Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Home, Gun, Thinking

  Counter-Attack (1918) "Dreamers"

  29 Copy quote

• Life for the majority of the population.
  Is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds.
  Culminating in a cheap funeral.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Struggle, Odds, Funeral

  Siegfried Sassoon (1983). “Siegfried Sassoon's long journey: selections from the Sherston memoirs”, Oxford University Press, USA

  21 Copy quote

• In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Opposites, Rose, Duality

  Siegfried Sassoon (1947). “Collected Poems”, London : Faber and Faber

  25 Copy quote

• And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
  I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Betrayal, War, Home

  Siegfried Sassoon (2012). “War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon”, p.58, Courier Corporation

  27 Copy quote

• For it is humanly certain that most of us remember very little of what we have read. To open almost any book a second time is to be reminded that we had forgotten well-nigh everything that the writer told us. Parting from the narrator and his narrative, we retain only a fading impression; and he, as it were, takes the book away from us and tucks it under his arm.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Book, Narrators, Fading

  33 Copy quote

• The song was wordless; The singing will never be done.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Song, Singing, Done

  War Poems (1919) "Everyone Sang"

  12 Copy quote

• Who's this—alone with stone and sky? It's only my old dog and I— It's only him; it's only me; Alone with stone and grass and tree. What share we most—we two together? Smells, and awareness of the weather. What is it makes us more than dust? My trust in him; in me his trust.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Dog, Dust, Sky

  Siegfried Sassoon (1956). “Sequences”

  23 Copy quote

• 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, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Military, War, Believe

  Siegfried Sassoon (1983). “Siegfried Sassoon's long journey: selections from the Sherston memoirs”, Oxford University Press, USA

  20 Copy quote

• December stillness, teach me through your trees That loom along the west, one with the land, The veiled evangel of your mysteries. While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down Deepens, and dusk embues me where I stand, With grave diminishings of green and brown, Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words; And let me learn your secret from the sky, Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds In lone remote migration beating by. December stillness, crossed by twilight roads, Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Twilight, Land, Sky

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “Collected Poems”

  24 Copy quote

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

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Land, Drawing, Soldier

  'Dreamers' (1918)

  17 Copy quote

• And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Flower, Wind, May

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “Collected Poems”

  182 Copy quote

• I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Soldier, Acting, Behalf

  Siegfried Sassoon (1983). “Siegfried Sassoon's long journey: selections from the Sherston memoirs”, Oxford University Press, USA

  11 Copy quote

• October's bellowing anger breakes and cleavesThe bronzed battalions of the stricken woodIn whose lament I hear a voice that grievesFor battle's fruitless harvest, and the feudOf outrage men. Their lives are like the leavesScattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blownAlong the westering furnace flaring red.O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Men, Voice, Battle

  Siegfried Sassoon, “Autumn”

  4 Copy quote

• Mud and rain and wretchedness and blood. Why should jolly soldier-boys complain? God made these before the roofless Flood - Mud and rain.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Rain, Boys, Blood

  9 Copy quote

• 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 ghosts that haunt my gaze.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Morning, Thoughtful, Soul

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “Collected Poems”

  17 Copy quote

• I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  War, Believe, Should Have

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston”

  8 Copy quote

• Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of our passion that all can share who walk the road of lovers. In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; and gods and demons clamoured in our senses.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Passion, Heaven, Secret

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “Collected Poems”

  13 Copy quote

• And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
  To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Betrayal, Halls, Music Hall

  'Blighters' (1917)

  7 Copy quote

• Across the land a faint blue veil of mist
  Seems hung; the woods wear yet arrayment sober
  Till frost shall make them flame; silent and whist
  The drooping cherry orchards of October
  Like mournful pennons hang their shriveling leaves
  Russet and orange: all things now decay;
  Long since ye garnered in your autumn sheaves,
  And sad the robins pipe at set of day.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Autumn, Blue, Flames

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “Collected Poems”

  10 Copy quote

• The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Europe, Safe

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “Collected Poems”

  10 Copy quote

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