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Quote by Siegfried Sassoon

Work

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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Author

Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon was an English poet known for his anti-war poetry. Born on September 8, 1886, and died on September 1, 1967, Sassoon's poetry is celebrated for its profound emotion and critical reflection on war. more

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“the rebels of 1905, at the frontier on which they stand united, teach us, to the sound of exploding bombs, that rebellion cannot lead, without ceasing to be rebellion, to consolation and to the comforts of dogma. Their only evident victory is to triumph at least over solitude and negation. In the midst of a world which they deny and which rejects them, they try, man after man, like all the great-hearted ones, to reconstruct a brotherhood of man. The love they bear for one another, which brings them happiness even in the desert of a prison, which extends to the great mass of their enslaved and silent fellow men, gives the measure of their distress and of their hopes. To serve this love, they must first kill; to inaugurate the reign of innocence, they must accept a certain culpability. This contradiction will be resolved for them only at the very last moment. Solitude and chivalry, renunciation and hope will only be surmounted by the willing acceptance of death.”