17 Top Siegfried Sassoon Quotes That You Will Regret Skipping

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.

Will Hope I

Siegfried Sassoon

  

I didn't want to die - not before I'd finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.

I

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

You War Never Home

Siegfried Sassoon

  

Mute in that golden silence hung with green, Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes Remembrance of all beauty that has been, And stillness from the pools of Paradise.

Me

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.

Death Music I

Siegfried Sassoon

  

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

Living

Siegfried Sassoon

  

Soldiers are dreamers.

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

  

O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Never Will Singing

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.

You Never Home

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.

Heart

Siegfried Sassoon

  

If I ever thought of myself as a man of thirty-five it was a visualization of dreary decrepitude.

I

Siegfried Sassoon

  

Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.

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

  

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

Me Friends Heart

Siegfried Sassoon

  

I died in hell. They called it Passchendaele.

I

Siegfried Sassoon

  

Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.

Alone

Siegfried Sassoon