Siegfried Sassoon quotes

Siegfried Sassoon was an English poet, writer, and soldier, renowned for his anti-war verses during World War I. His powerful poetry exposed the brutality of trench warfare and challenged patriotic ideals of the time. He became a prominent voice of protest and a key figure in twentieth-century English literature. Here are 36 of his quotes:

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

Siegfried Sassoon

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line of death.

Siegfried Sassoon

The visionless officialized fatuity That once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.

Siegfried Sassoon

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

Siegfried Sassoon

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

Siegfried Sassoon

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

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

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

What voice revisits me this night? What face To my heart's room returns? From the perpetual silence where the grace Of human sainthood burns Hastes he once more to harmonise and heal? I know not. Only I feel His influence undiminished And his life's work, in me and many, unfinished.

Siegfried Sassoon

Deep in my morning time he made his mark And still he comes uncalled to be my guide In devastated regions When the brain has lost its bearings in the dark And broken in it's body's pride In the long campaign to which it had sworn allegiance.

Siegfried Sassoon

Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans... Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom.

Siegfried Sassoon

I'd say - "I used to know his father well; Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap." And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die - in bed.

Siegfried Sassoon

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

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

Siegfried Sassoon

October's bellowing anger breakes and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood.

Siegfried Sassoon

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.

Siegfried Sassoon

Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone, The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Siegfried Sassoon

Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Siegfried Sassoon

I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the contrivance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

Siegfried Sassoon

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.

Siegfried Sassoon

O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

Siegfried Sassoon