Robert Graves Quotes
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight
I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.
What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.
If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.
Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.
As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as I yours for ever.
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.
A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.
The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild I'd love to be a Fairy's child.
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.
Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart's desire.
The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.
Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.
Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.
No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.
No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.
Hate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
When I'm killed, don't think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there's one thing that I know well, I'm damned if I'll be damned to Hell!
Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.
Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.
The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.
You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.
He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits: This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid. Till in the end he could not change the tragic habits This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.