Robert Graves quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Robert Graves

Robert Graves Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Robert Graves on Wise Famous Quotes.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

This is a story of what I was, not what I am.

There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either.

One smile relieves a heart that grieves.

One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.

Wakeful they lie.

The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate

The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.

Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.

With eager dragon-eyes;

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 Argonauts looked at one another in amazement and exclaimed with one voice: 'Hercules!

Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart's desire ...

Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus.

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

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

As quick as boiled asparagus!

The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.

Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.

Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.

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.

Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.

New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.

The conversation was like the sort one has in dreams - mad but interesting.

there are two different ways of writing history: one is to persuade men to virtue and the other is to compel men to truth.

What we now call 'finance' is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

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.

Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either. - Robert Graves

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.

But [I] had sworn on the very day of my demobilization never to be under anyone's orders for the rest of my life. Somehow I must live by writing.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

I think,' said Arete with warmth, 'that to go to sleep on a problem which one is too lazy to solve is a most foolish procedure.

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.

He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about.

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.

There is one story and one story only.

A song? What laughter or what song
Can this house remember?
Do flowers and butterflies
Belong to a blind December?

Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.

Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.

Peleus lived to a good age and survived his famous son Achilles, an initiate of the Centaur Horse fraternity, who was killed at the siege of Troy.

Those that can't beat the ass, beat the saddle.

Yet let me warn you to beware of the one-sandalled man: he will hate you, and before he has done his hatred will make mince-meat of you.

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.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

True poetry (inspired by the Muse and her prime symbol, the moon) even today is a survival, or intuitive re-creation, of the ancient Goddess-worship.

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money

In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.

Black drinks the sun and draws all colours into it.
I am bleached white, my truant love. Come back,
and stain me with the intensity of black.

You know how it is when one talks of liberty. Everything seems beautifully simple. One expects every gate to open and every wall to fall flat.

Eros aimed one of his arrows at Medea, and drove it into her heart, up to the feathers.

I don't answer questions about conjectures.

Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

For words of rapture groping, they"Never such love," swore "ever before was!"

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money.

Time is not the stable moving-staircase that prosemen have for centuries pretended it to be, but an unaccountable wibble-wobble

As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

Lovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him.

I am supposed to be an utter fool and the more I read the more of a fool they think me.

You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?

Because the world is in a sick condition and we are all somehow infected, against our will, even if we think we are whole in mind and soul and body.

Fact is not truth, but a poet who willfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.

There's no money in poetry. Then again, there's no poetry in money either.

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

You've read of sunsets rich as mine.

Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

You don't want captains in the army who know too much or think too much.

I love, therefore I am.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

You're all scum and you know it

English poetic education should, really, not begin with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with Song of Amergin.

Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.