Wilfred Quotes

Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. ~ Wilfred Owen

And you have fixed my life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze. ~ Wilfred Owen

The road to Hades is easy to travel. ~ Wilfred Bion

Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale? ~ Wilfred Burchett

I was ready in 2008 for the Olympic Games but unfortunately I missed the Kenyan trials with a thigh injury. I watched those Olympics but it was tough to watch. But it was good in the end because a Kenyan, Wilfred Bungei, was the champion. ~ David Rudisha

It was necessary to bluff the Japanese camp commanders, with whatever authority I could muster, that I had come officially to ensure that the surrender terms were being complied with and that living conditions for the POWs were being immediately improved. ~ Wilfred Burchett

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language ... everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious. ~ Wilfred Owen

The dispassionate intellect, the open mind, the unprejudiced observer, exist in an exact sense only in a sort of intellectualist folk-lore; states even approaching them cannot be reached without a moral and emotional effort most of us cannot or will not make. ~ Wilfred Trotter

My emotional and intellectual response to Hiroshima was that the question of the social responsibility of a journalist was posed with greater urgency than ever. ~ Wilfred Burchett

Disease often tells its secrets in a casual parenthesis. ~ Wilfred Trotter

There breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead. ~ Wilfred Owen

Hundreds and hundreds of the dead were so badly burned in the terrific heat generated by the bomb that it was not even possible to tell whether they were men or women, old or young. ~ Wilfred Burchett

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want. ~ Wilfred Owen

The best definition of faith that I know is that it is reason grown courageous. Moreover, that is all that Christ ever asked us for, and the reason he asked us for that was because he wants to use us. He needs our help. It is almost impossible to believe it. But God Almighty wants our help, so Christ tells us. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

No one can write their real religious life with pen or pencil. It is written only in actions, and its seal is our character, not our orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbor, or God is the judge, absolutely the only value of our religious life to ourselves or to anyone is what it fits us for and enables us to do. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

That was what he wanted to tell his audience at Cambridge. He divided classical satirists into two classes - fierce men starving in garrets, and renouncing popularity and circulation to dwell in tubs, and calm good-livers "who tell amusingly the kind of truth that no one has ever denied." But for the present century the right spirit, he believed, was self-satire, the ability to see humor in the constant small defeats of life, and "the power to be startled by nothing, however extravagant." The subject, in the end, turned out to be more relevant than it had seemed, as anyone could have told who had heard Eddie and Wilfred laughing together. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

France turned a deaf ear to the demands, but Ho had succeeded in attracting great publicity in progressive French circles to the situation in Indochina. ~ Wilfred Burchett

No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness. ~ Wilfred Owen

It is too often forgotten that the gift of speech, so centrally employed, has been elaborated as much for the purpose of concealing thought by dissimulation and lying as for the purpose of elucidating and communicating thought. ~ Wilfred Bion

I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

I am the enemy you killed, my friend. ~ Wilfred Owen

The privilege of prayer to me is one of the most cherished possessions, because faith and experience alike convince me that God himself sees and answers, and His answers I never venture to criticize. It is only my part to ask. If it were otherwise, I would not dare to pray at all. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment. ~ Wilfred Owen

Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes - except that there were no ashes. ~ Wilfred Burchett

We ought not to heap reproaches on old age, seeing that we all hope to reach it. ~ Wilfred Bion

My anthology continues to sell & the critics get more & more angry. When I excluded Wilfred Owen, whom I consider unworthy of the poets' corner of a country newspaper, I did not know I was excluding a revered sandwich-board Man of the revolution & that some body has put his worst & most famous poem in a glass-case in the British Museum
however if I had known it I would have excluded him just the same. He is all blood, dirt & sucked sugar stick (look at the selection in Faber's Anthology
he calls poets 'bards,' a girl a 'maid,' & talks about 'Titanic wars'). There is every excuse for him but none for those who like him ... (from a letter of December 26, 1936, in Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley, p. 124). ~ W.B.Yeats

The second thing to be striven for is intuition. This sounds an impossibility, for who can control that small quiet monitor? But intuition is only interference from experience stored and not actively recalled. ~ Wilfred Trotter

Don't be afraid of change. Change happens for a reason. Roll with it. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. ~ Wilfred James Dolor

I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry? ~ Wilfred Owen

Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of 'his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

At some point in this course, perhaps even tonight, you will read something difficult, something you only partially understand, and your verdict will be this is stupid. Will I argue when you advance that opinion in class the next day? Why would I do such a useless ting? My time with you in short, only thirty-four weeks of classes, and I will not waste it arguing about the merits of this short story or that poem. Why would I, when all such opinions are subjective, and no final resolution can ever be reached?'

Some of the kids - Gloria was one of them - now looked lost, but Pete understood exactly what Mr. Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, was talking about...

'Time is the answer," Mr Ricker said on the first day of Pete's sophomore year. He strode back and forth, antique bellbottoms swishing, occasionally waving his arms. "Yes! Time mercilessly culls away the is-stupid from the not-stupid."
...
"It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rear-view mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something - perhaps 'Dulce et Decorum Est,' by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?'

Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete's back and tightened his throat, Mr. Ricker cried, " 'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...' And son on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid."

~ Stephen King

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains[3]that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from prog ~ Wilfred Owen

The truly scientific mind is altogether unafraid of the new, and while having no mercy for ideas which have served their turn or shown their uselessness, it will not grudge to any unfamiliar conception its moment of full and friendly attention, hoping to expand rather than to minimize what small core of usefulness it may happen to contain. ~ Wilfred Trotter

Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold. ~ Wilfred Owen

Arrogance is a great obstruction to wisdom. ~ Wilfred Bion

And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies. ~ Wilfred Owen

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell. ~ Wilfred Owen

Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one ~ Wilfred Owen

And just as there was something of every Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh so there is something of Ho Chi Minh in almost every present-day Vietnamese, so strong is his imprint on the Vietnamese nation. ~ Wilfred Burchett

A good leader makes a good follower. ~ Wilfred Bion

The end of a dissolute life is a desperate death. ~ Wilfred Bion

Where only angels tread, he would be a fool to rush in; though perhaps the wise may preserve their dignity if, aware of their presumption, they enter cautiously. ~ Wilfred Cantwell Smith

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

The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not 'to have and to hold' but "to give and serve." ~ Wilfred Grenfell

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. ~ Wilfred Owen

It was not noisy prejudice that caused the work of Mendel to lie dead for thirty years, but the sheer inability of contemporary opinion to distinguish between a new idea and nonsense. ~ Wilfred Trotter

I liked working with Tom Christopher as he was great as Hawk, and Wilfred Hyde White but I wished it were in a different context as the changes really tuned off the audience. ~ Gil Gerard

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting. ~ Wilfred Owen

Beware as you get the octopus on board. Suddenly he relaxes his grasp, and shhots out a jet of ink, which smarts considerably. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

Success and vocabulary go hand in hand. This has been proven so often that it no longer admits of argument. ~ Wilfred Funk

The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head. ~ Wilfred Owen

Every session attended by the analyst must have no history and no future. What is 'known' about the patient is of no further consequence: it is either false or irrelevant. If it is 'known' by patient and analyst, it is obsolete ... The only point of importance in any session is the unknown. Nothing must be allowed to distract from intuiting that. In any session, evolution takes place. Out of the darkness and formlessness something evolves. ~ Wilfred Bion

What use will money be to him in the Sands. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

To be unable to bear an ill is itself a great ill. ~ Wilfred Bion

I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed. ~ Wilfred Owen

The word of God is the Christian soul's best weapon, and it is essential to have it with him always. In doubt it decides, in consultation it directs; in anxiety it reassures; in sorrow it comforts; in failure it encourages; in defense it protects; in offense it is mightier than the mighty. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

She looked at him. She was feeling reckless, emotional, out of sorts, and she was tired of his constant hints. "I found the experience so unpleasant with Wilfred that I kicked him out lest he want to repeat the whole thing." She shuddered. "I was expecting someone younger and healthier than Sir Thomas would convince me that lovemaking was worth the trouble. It isn't. It's nasty and ugly and dirty."

He stared at her for a long moment. And then he spoke. "Dear girl," he said softly, "don't you know that any reasonable man would take that as a challenge?"

She jerked her head up to look at him, into those very dark green eyes. "Don't be absurd. Why would anyone bother when there are so many willing females around? I'm too much trouble. And besides, I don't consider you a reasonable man."

His smile was fleeting. "I'm an eminently reasonable man." And before she realized what he was doing she was back in his arms and he was kissing her, openmouthed and hot and wet, no teasing approach, just raw, sexual demand that should have filled her with disgust and dismay.
He didn't like mysteries, any more than he liked emotions, weaknesses or unsatisfied lust. ~ Anne Stuart

Shall they return to beating of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to village wells,
Up half-known roads. ~ Wilfred Owen

And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,
Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my head. ~ Wilfred Owen

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, - knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags. ~ Wilfred Owen

The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine ... bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 ... this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species. ~ Wilfred Trotter

She is elegant rather than belle. ~ Wilfred Owen

As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen's poem "Insensibility" puts it so well, those who feel most of others suffer most in war. ~ Eugene B. Sledge

Ho, or Nguyen Ai Quoc, thus became the first Vietnamese communist and a founding member of the French Communist party, born out of the split. ~ Wilfred Burchett

Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote! ~ Wilfred Owen

Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill. ~ Wilfred Owen

A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got. ~ Wilfred Greene, 1st Baron Greene

The war effects me less than it ought. I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter. ~ Wilfred Owen

Misers take care of property as if it belonged to them, but derive no more benefit from it than if it belonged to others. ~ Wilfred Bion

My anger with the US was not at first, that they had used that weapon - although that anger came later. ~ Wilfred Burchett

I knew instinctively that it was the very hardness of life in the desert which drew me back there - it was the same pull which takes men back to the polar ice, to high mountains, and to the sea. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells,
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes,
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall,
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each, slow dusk a drawing down of blinds. ~ Wilfred Owen

I tried to peg out soldierly,
no use!
One dies of war like any old disease. ~ Wilfred Owen

Many Englishmen have written about camels. When I open a book and see the familiar disparagement, the well-worn humour, I realize that the author's knowledge of them is slight, that he has never lived among the Bedu, who know the camel's worth: 'Ata Allah', or 'God's gift', they call her, and it is her patience that wins the Arab's heart. I have never seen a Bedu strike or ill-treat a camel. Always the camel's needs come first. It is not only that the Bedu's existence depends upon the welfare of his animals, but that he has a real affection for them. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher came to distribute the prizes at that school', proceeded Gussie in a dull, toneless voice.'He dropped a book. He stooped to pick it up. And, as he stooped, his trousers split up the back'.
'How we roared! ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I knew that I had made my last journey in the Empty Quarter and that a phase in my life was ended. Here in the desert I found all that I asked; I knew that I should never find it again. But it was not only this personal sorrow that distressed me. I realized that the Bedu with whom I had lived and traveled, and in whose company I had found contentment, were doomed. Some people maintain that they will be better off when they have exchanged the hardship and poverty of the desert for the security of a materialistic world. This I do not believe. I shall always remember how often I was humbled by those illiterate herdsmen who possessed, in so much greater measure than I, generosity and courage, endurance, patience and lighthearted gallantry. Among no other people have I ever felt the same sense of personal inferiority. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

As in all his subsequent dealings with France, Ho Chi Minh's demands were a model of modesty. ~ Wilfred Burchett

Sometimes there are things in our lives that aren't meant to stay. Sometimes the changes we don't want are the changes we need to grow." - W.J. Dlor ~ Wilfred James Dolor

The knowledge of this marvelous period has made faith far easier from an intellectual standpoint, and has enabled us to be more patient in waiting to see the truth, not as now ~ Wilfred Grenfell

Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all? ~ Wilfred Owen

If a new result is to have any value, it must unite elements long since known, but till then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned. ~ Wilfred Bion

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie: It is sweet and fitting that you should die for your country. ~ Wilfred Owen

Strange friend,' I said,'here is no cause to mourn.' 'None,'said the other,'save the undone years, The hopelessness.Whatever hope is yours Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world. ~ Wilfred Owen

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears. ~ Wilfred Owen

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,
To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds. ~ Wilfred Owen

Just because someone has been in your life for many years, doesn't mean there shouldn't be a point at which you finally decide to let go. ~ Wilfred James Dolor

Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity. ~ Wilfred Burchett

There's darkness everywhere. You just can't see it because the sun is such an attention-whore. ~ Jason Gann

The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned:
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
Left in the ground. ~ Wilfred Owen

The meat smelt rank and was very tough, the soup was greasy and of a curious flavour, but it was a wonderful meal after all these hungry weeks. ~ Wilfred Thesiger

Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad. ~ Wilfred Owen

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me. ~ Wilfred Owen

Donna: You really believe in all that stuff, don't you?
Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins): It's all over the place these days. If I wait here long enough ...
Donna: I don't suppose you've seen a little blue box.
Wilfred: Is that slang for something?
Donna: I mean it. If you ever see a little blue box, flying up there in the sky, you shout for me, Gramps. Oh you just shout.
Wilfred: You know, I don't understand half the things you say these days.
Donna: Nor me.
Wilfred: Fair do's. You've had a funny old time of it lately
-Doctor Who ~ Russell T. Davies

The fundamental activity of medical science is to determine the ultimate causation of disease. ~ Wilfred Trotter

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead. ~ Wilfred Owen

I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying 'Enough! Enough!', had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them ~ Wilfred Thesiger

The dust that fell unnoted as a dew,
Wrapped the dead city's face like mummy-cloth ~ Wilfred Owen

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's. ~ Wilfred Owen

Wisdom or oblivion - take your choice. From that warfare there is no release. ~ Wilfred R. Bion