Siegfried Sassoon Quotes

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

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

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 have been, they had at any rate the advantage of containing, for me, an element of sustained unfamiliarity. I am one of those persons who begin life by exclaiming they've "never seen anything like this before" and die in the hope that they may say the same of heaven. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Rambling among woods and meadows, I could 'take sweet counsel' with the country-side; sitting on a grassy bank and lifting my face to the sun, I could feel an intensity of thankfulness such as I'd never known before the War; listening to the little brook that bubbled out of a copse and across a rushy field, I could discard my personal relationship with the military machine and its ant-like armies. On ~ Siegfried Sassoon

An innocent youth wrote recently that he is convinced I am the greatest writer in the world (from New Zealand). A touching letter – so simple & unaffected. Another young man wrote, only yesterday, that I am to him what Hardy must have been to me. Such tributes are worth having, aren't they, even if I don't deserve them. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

I keep such music in my brain
No din this side of death can quell;
Glory exulting over pain,
And beauty, garlanded in hell. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Let my soul, a shining tree, Silver branches lift towards thee, Where on a hallowed winter's night The clear-eyed angels may alight. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are dreamers. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

I have always been considerably addicted to my own company. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

When Dick was killed last week he looked like that, Flapping along the fire-step like a fish, After the blazing crump had knocked him flat ... . How many dead? As many as ever you wish. Don't count 'em; they're too many. Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny? ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen cold
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head ...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

And my last words shall be these – that it is only from the inmost silences of the heart that we know the world for what it is, and ourselves for what the world has made us. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

It's called 'The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935'. They let a man named Yeats make the choosings. They shouldn't have. Who is he - and what does he know about verse?
I hunted through that book for poems by Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. There weren't any - not one. And do you know why not? Because Mr Yeats said - he said, "I deliberately chose NOT to include any poems from World War I. I have a distaste for them. Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

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

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

EVERYONE suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields;
on - on - and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

Suicide in the trenches:
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
* * * * *
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 died in hell. They called it Passchendaele. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

In me the tiger sniffs the rose. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

As regards being dead, however, one of my main consolations has always been that I have the strongest intention of being an extremely active ghost. Let nobody make any mistake about that. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

Does it matter?
losing your legs? ...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after football
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?
losing your sight? ...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter?
those dreams from the pit? ...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know that you've fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
'When are you going out to them again?
Are they not still your brothers through our blood? ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Before the Battle:
Music of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool,
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book. ~ Pat Barker

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 to actual happenings. At the age of twenty-two I believed myself to be unextinguishable. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees. ~ 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

54. At Daybreak
I LISTEN for him through the rain,
And in the dusk of starless hours
I know that he will come again;
Loth was he ever to forsake me:
He comes with glimmering of flowers 5
And stir of music to awake me.
Spirit of purity, he stands
As once he lived in charm and grace:
I may not hold him with my hands,
Nor bid him stay to heal my sorrow; 10
Only his fair, unshadowed face
Abides with me until to-morrow. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

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

I am banished from the patient men who fight.
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

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 ~ Siegfried Sassoon

They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky ~ Siegfried Sassoon

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

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble,
Since there your elements assemble. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

To him, as to me, the War was inevitable and justifiable. Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees, was a crime against humanity. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

He belonged to the old school of country gentlemen, ruling his estate with semi-benevolent tyranny and turning his back on all symptoms of social innovation. Under his domination the Packlestone country had been looked after on feudal system lines. His method of dealing with epistolary complaints from discontented farmers was to ignore them; in verbal intercourse he bulled them and sent them about their business with a good round oath. Such people, he firmly believed, were put there by Providence to touch their hats and do as they were told by their betters ... And as such he continued beyond his eightieth year, until he fell into a fish-pond on his estate and was buried by the parson whose existence he had spurned by his arrogance. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Sitting here I glance over my right shoulder at the little row of books, red and green and blue, which stand waiting for my hand, offering their accumulated riches. I think of the years that may be in store for me, and of all the pages I may turn. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

To me hair dressing means shape. It's very important that the foundations should be right. ~ Vidal Sassoon

Even T.E. Lawrence, who hardly knew the meaning of fear, was by Sassoon's own account, terrified after only five minutes of his driving; 'my methods of turning from side roads into main roads were abrupt in those days' Sassoon added by way of explanation. ~ Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Words are fools
Who follow blindly, once they get a lead.
But thoughts are kingfishers that haunt the pools
Of quiet; seldom-seen... ~ Siegried Sassoon

Beauty is.. The passionate and positive expression of the complete self. ~ Vidal Sassoon

I've been drawing authors and politicians for newspapers for many years. I try to read up on the person; in the case of authors, read one of their books. I watch interviews via YouTube and collect pictures via the Internet. ~ Siegfried Woldhek

I read what I write over and over and make corrections and improvements, until I reach the conclusion that the material deserves to stand on its own. ~ Siegfried Lenz

Realizing our society as it is, without theology dogmatically telling us how we should react to it, and being humane toward that society, that is all that we're sure of. ~ Vidal Sassoon

I came home after a year and although my profession was only hairdressing, I knew I could change it. ~ Vidal Sassoon

I sit in my room at my desk, looking out the window to the yard and waiting for a plot to come to me, to rise slowly in my mind. ~ Siegfried Lenz

My mother had a premonition and she felt that hairdressing would be very very good for me. ~ Vidal Sassoon

If you just do something, then you're a five-year wonder and, goodbye, you're gone. But if people feel it's worthwhile, not only do they copy but they want to learn how to do it To me, that's what it's all about. If someone were to ask me, 'What's the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?' It was the teaching of others so that they could take my work and take it further. ~ Vidal Sassoon

Do you want to injure someone's reputation? Don't speak ill of him, speak too well. ~ Andre Siegfried

The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that combination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence. ~ Philippe Aries

Like most ghetto kids I knew it was important to be 'somebody' so I became a good soccer player, because excelling at a sport seemed to make you special. ~ Vidal Sassoon

You never argued with my mother. You couldn't win. ~ Vidal Sassoon

There is no one who has no leisure time at all. The office is not a permanent sanctuary, and Sundays are an institution. Thus, in principle, during those beautiful hours of free time everyone would have the opportunity to rouse himself into real boredom. But although one wants to do nothing, things are done to one: the world makes sure that one does not find oneself. And even if one perhaps isn't interested in it, the world itself is much too interested for one to find the peace and quiet necessary to be as thoroughly bored with the world as it ultimately deserves. ~ Siegfried Kracauer

A shudder runs through the viewer of old photographs. For they make visible not the knowledge of the original but the spatial configuration of a moment; what appears in the photograph is not the person but the sum of what can be subtracted from him or her. ~ Siegfried Kracauer

The world has become a photographable present, and the photographed present has been entirely eternalized. Seemingly ripped from the clutch of death, in reality it has succumbed to it. ~ Siegfried Kracauer

A few days later we went to the opera together to watch my beloved Siegfried. It was a pleasure for me to listen to it beside the man who had become my hero. ~ Andre Maurois

'The Pianist' is a movie I could watch over and over again. ~ Vidal Sassoon

Mary Quant is my favourite fashion designer. ~ Vidal Sassoon

My mother left me for seven years in an orphanage. ~ Vidal Sassoon

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration
and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth. ~ David Eddings

There is a striking parallel between the spreading of germs and the spreading of ideas or propaganda. On the one hand we are dealing with a virus which can be transported and transmitted under certain conditions which favor or limit its transportation or transmission: on the other hand with ideas, religions, and doctrines, which can be described as germs, benevolent or malevolent, according to the point of view one takes up. These germs can either remain at their source and be sterile, or emerge in the spreading of infection. ~ Andre Siegfried

There were so many pretty girls coming into the salon as clients, and others working in the salon. And I thought, 'Hmm. This is rather nice.' ~ Vidal Sassoon

I kept thinking I would be spending my life up to my elbows in shampoo. ~ Vidal Sassoon

No realm was too petty: The Ministry of Posts ruled that henceforth when trying to spell a word over the telephone a caller could no longer say "D as in David," because "David" was a Jewish name. The caller had to use "Dora." "Samuel" became "Siegfried." And so forth. "There has been nothing in social history more implacable, more heartless and more devastating than the present policy in Germany against the Jews," Consul General Messersmith told Undersecretary Phillips in a long letter dated September 29, 1933. He wrote, "It is definitely the aim of the Government, no matter what it may say to the outside or in Germany, to eliminate the Jews from German life. ~ Erik Larson

I don't use names or captions for my many portraits of politicians and authors for newspapers. The drawing has to be self-explanatory, so I spend a lot of time sketching to find an idea and an angle that is clear. ~ Siegfried Woldhek

Good hairstylists never die. Vidal Sassoon and Paul Mitchell will always live on. ~ John Paul DeJoria

Simpler smaller stages: Breakdown all your plans into simpler smaller stages and you shall be able to achieve them. Don't just have a holistic plan; break them down into daily targets, weekly targets and monthly targets. For example, a student should not just have "I want to pass my accountancy exams by 75% in June sitting". Break this down into stages like "I shall study 2 hours at dawn, 3 days in a week and study 5 hours on weekends". ~ Siegfried Silverman

Most people have excellent necks. Now they cover them with curtains, which is kind of ridiculous. But there are some beautiful necklines that you can cut into and create wonderful backs, as well as bone structure for the face. ~ Vidal Sassoon

From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism. ~ Vidal Sassoon

It is impossible to think of France except in terms of individuals. ~ Andre Siegfried

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous. ~ Michael Caine

Wanting to change your handwriting may be an indication that you are ready, or wanting, to change a whole lot of other things in your life as well. You alone can decide what you wish to change and why. ~ Rosemary Sassoon

Hairdressers are a wonderful breed. You work one-on-one with another human being and the object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a twinkle in their eye. ~ Vidal Sassoon

It's hard to give advice. There are so many people, how do you give major advice to a group of people, it's very presumptuous. ~ Vidal Sassoon

The essence is, what can we do next? And will it be good? ~ Vidal Sassoon

To sculpt a head of hair with scissors is an art form. It's in pursuit of art. ~ Vidal Sassoon

A good trick as you get older is to get a thick pair of glasses that have a dark frame. Everything else can droop and slide but that pair of dark glasses stays sharp and crisp. Look at Cary Grant. Look at Vidal Sassoon. ~ Tom Ford

Sometimes, it is precisely when you discover that you are living very happily that you suddenly find yourself in danger. To be happy means to discover that you are exposed to being hurt. ~ Siegfried Lenz