Wilfred Owen Quotes

The times are squalid. They always were. It is a poet's duty to hold the line.

The first question at that time in poetry was simply the question of honesty, of sincerity.

All a poet can do today is warn.

The first test any poem must pass is no longer, 'Is it true to nature?' but a criterion looking in a different direction: namely, 'Is it sincere? Is it genuine?'

A poet's first contract is with truth.

O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.

It's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.

A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.

Poets, when they write of love, give themselves and everyone else away!

John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.

The truest poetry is the most feigning.

The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.

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 conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Scientist alone is true poet.

About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.

Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.

The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other.

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.

A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.